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HERALDS OF A PASSION 
Rev. CHARLES L. GOODELL, d.d. 



HERALDS , 
OF A PASSION 



BY 

Rev. CHARLES L. GOODELL, d.d. 

SECRETARY, COMMISSION 6n EVANGELISM 

AND LIFE SERVICE OF THE 

FEDERAL COUNCIL OF THE CHURCHES 

OF CHRIST IN AMERICA 




NEW ^^S^ YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






^ 



COPYRIGHT, I92I. 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



.rj 



DEC 28 iy2l 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

g)CI.A653256 



TO 

MY TRUE FRIEND 

JUDGE AMOS L. BEATY 



FOREWORD 

I think it fair to my reader, my book and myself 
to guard at the outset against any possible mis- 
apprehension as to the form and purpose of my 
message. Lest any one should be misled by the 
word ^^ Passion" in my title and its recurrence 
through many chapters, I hasten to say this book 
is no plea for emotionalism or sentiment alism of 
any sort. I am not interested in turning the steam 
on the whistle ; my concern is that there shall be 
fire under the boiler. Nothing in this book can 
be construed as an appeal to fear, or self-love, or 
a spineless mysticism, or against criticism, high 
or low. If scholars have brought virgin gold to 
view, if criticism has cut an old truth into finer 
facets, no one will welcome that more than I. 
Each additional discovery makes the whole Chris- 
tian world richer. It is a common treasure in 
which men of all shades of opinion should rejoice. 

You may be wiser than I, and that is well, not 
because it is a treasure over which you may gloat, 
but because it supplies you with the means to be 
of greater service to your kind. He who knows 
most must, therefore, do most, ^^for to whom much 
is given of him also will much be required. ' ' I am 
following after you as fast as I can. ^^What I 
know not, teach thou me," said the good St. 
Augustine, ^^and do not beat me down in order 
to quicken my pace for then I can not follow you 

vii 



viii FOEEWOED 

at all.'' There is one thing greater than truth, 
and that is love. ^^You may die without the 
knowledge of many truths, ' ' said Wesley, ' ' and yet 
be carried into Abraham's bosom, but if you die 
without love, what will knowledge avail? Just as 
much as it avails the devil and his angels." 

I am led to the choice of the stirring theme 
which I present because it seems to me after wide 
travel throughout the country and intimate asso- 
ciations with men in the churches and out of them, 
that the great need of the hour is a holy passion 
for the souls of men. If the angel of the churches 
was to bring once more a greeting and challenge to 
the Church of the Living God, it would be a repe- 
tition of the message to the Church at Laodicea. 
Once it was said that ''the coat-of-arms of the 
twentieth century is an interrogation point ram- 
pant above three bishops dormant, and its motto 
'Query'." We are not passed far into the twen- 
tieth century, but we have passed beyond that 
attitude of mind. The church and the country are 
in the throes of no great theological question — 
the names of Darwin, of Spencer and of Huxley no 
longer marshal the scientists and theologians to 
battle. The effect of the great war has discounted 
the position which was taken by many German 
critics. Even higher criticism itself has spent 
much of its forces; some of its contentions have 
been established and others have been proven to be 
of too little value longer to disturb and irritate the 
Church. The great fundamentals of the Chris- 
tian life were never more generally accepted inside 
the Church than they are today, but the sad thing 
about it all is that the world does not seem to be 
enough interested in Christian things even to dis- 
cuss them. Not long ago the question was pro- 



FOEEWOED ix 

pounded in literary circles, ^^Do yon find religions 
nnrest among yonr friends and what is the canse 
of itr^ The answer returned was, ^^We know 
nothing about religious unrest; we are not dis- 
turbed at all, we sleep. We do not go to Church 
Sunday morning because we are in bed. We do 
not take up religious questions because we are not 
interested in them." So it appears that the 
weapon which is being used against the Church and 
religion today is not the sword or the stiletto, but 
the sand bag. The neglect of these things which 
we once held dear is due not to conviction but to 
indifference. We do not make this as a sweeping 
charge. There are happy exceptions throughout 
the country. On the whole, no year has marked 
as large gains in the Christian Church as the 
present year, but it still remains true that com- 
pared with what might be accomplished there is 
such a dearth of zeal and such benumbing of 
thought and activity as to sadden the heart of 
every lover of righteousness. 

This attitude of stolidity and indifference was 
the one thing which Jesus could not stand. Next 
to actual hypocrisy. He fulminated against it with 
all the power of a flaming soul. He wanted men 
to think things through and to do as they ought 
to do. He could not brook indifference in any- 
thing. The message to the Church at Laodicea 
was: *'Ye are neither cold nor hot. I would you 
were either one thing or the other. I would rather 
you would stand out openly against me than to be 
cold and indifferent. You have plenty of money 
and think you need nothing. You do not under- 
stand. You are wretched and miserable and poor 
and blind and naked.'' What a challenge that 



X FOREWOED 

was to the first orthodox church in town, with a 
tall steeple and a fine choir, a big congregation 
and a great preacher! 

I wish to bring this simple message of my 
Master. When He ordained Peter, He asked him 
no question in creed or church reform. There was 
only one question, so often repeated that it burned 
itself into Peter's soul, ^'Lovest thou me?'' 
Among the dilettanti, it is supposed to be bad 
form to be interested in anything. The spirit of 
wonder has died out. Nothing any more is grand, 
dominant and imperative. The glory of Words- 
worth's early morning has faded into the light of 
common day. In some way we must get back our 
old enthusiasm; in some way we must find once 
more that passion which changed the face of the 
ages and sent the Church with a pentecostal flame 
to carry the good tidings everywhere. It is to 
that purpose that these pages address themselves. 

C. L. G. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword vii 

CHAPTER 

I The Passion of Jesus . . . .. . :. 15 

II The Table-Talk of Jesus ...... 37 

III Heralds of a Passion ...(... 55 

IV Holy Boldness ....,.;.. > 65 
V Culture — ^A Load or a Lift . . :. . t. 75 

VI The Passion of the Prophets .... 85 

VII The Passion of the Great Evangelists . 91 

VIII The Teacher's Passion 101 

IX The Passion of the Church . . . . 109 

X The Passion for Service ..... 123 

XI How to Nourish the Sacred Fire . . . 135 



Chaptee I 
THE PASSION OF JESUS 



HERALDS OF A PASSION 

CHAPTER I 

THE PASSIOK OF JESUS 

That word ^ ^passion'' has gotten into bad com- 
pany if, as Dr. Crothers says, "sl noun is known 
by the company it keeps. '^ The word itself is a 
pure word. It simply means love on fire. A mas- 
ter of English literature has said all high poetry 
has its source in passion. Of course that passion 
may take form in love, or jealousy, or hate, or any 
other strong passion that transports the mind out 
of and above itself. It was left for Christianity 
to give to that word its highest meaning. The pas- 
sions of the human heart were crowded into the 
yearning of a life and the agony of the cross. The 
symbol of our faith is a cross. On that cross our 
Master died, and our chief business is to declare 
a love that even the cross could not halt. Every^ 
thing great in life is a passion, and religion, if 
alive, must be impassioned, must be threaded 
through and through with a network of exquisite 
nerves. I am the more anxious to impress this, 

15 



16 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

because we are living in an age that aims to rob 
religion of its ^inflammatory touch." There are 
those who look upon all signs of emotion and devo- 
tion with distress. They seek to set forth their 
faith in mental crystals, they keep a cold bath for 
every fervor, and when their epitaph is written, 
sad-eyed angels will carve in the marble, '^They 
died of too much self-control." ^^ Light enough, 
but no heat," was the way someone described an- 
cient philosophy. That is a good description of 
much of the theorizing of today. It is heat the 
world needs quite as much as light. The path to 
sound thinking is not always through a big brain, 
sometimes it is through a warm heart. 

"The heart is wiser than the intellect 
And works with surer hands and swifter feet 
Toward wise conclusions." 

A big brain and a big heart ought to go to- 
gether. Neither is complete without the other. 

It is a life on fire that kindles another. The 
fiercest enemy to be fought in our day is sheer 
apathy. We have been talking about religious 
unrest. As a matter of fact, there is too little 
of it — ^the people are asleep. What breaks the 
heart of the enthusiast is to fire red hot shells 
into a mud bank. 

Have you ever meditated on the passion of 
our Lord? Is there a more pathetic story in liter- 
ature than the rejection of Jesus I He came 
unto His own and His own received Him not. 



THE PASSION OF JESUS 17 

He was poor and lowly. He was cast out as evil. 
He died upon the cross — died deserted, and men 
called Him mad. He was bom among the cattle 
and He died among thieves. We marvel how the 
Jews could turn away from Him, but if the Lord 
of Glory came among us today, would we give 
Him any kindlier reception? He was eager; we 
are cold. He was enthusiastic ; we are indifferent. 
He wept over Jerusalem; we seldom weep even 
for ourselves. The Church's thermometer has 
dropped ; her step in many quarters is leaden and 
her spirit dull. We have lost the fine fervor of 
our early rapture. There are too few with blaz- 
ing eye and burning heart. Some way we must 
win back that early enthusiasm. Do we not need 
the coming of that spirit that shall convict of 
sin and righteousness and judgment, so that our 
hearts shall bum and our tongues kindle? Time 
was when sin was an ugly thing; people were pos- 
itive about moral things. There were two colors — 
things were very black or very white. There was 
a sharp line drawn between him who served God 
and him who served Him not. In our disposi- 
tion to be tolerant, have we not lost the real sense 
of values? Our black and white seems to have 
faded into a general gray. The bad are not so 
bad as they might be; the good are not so good 
as they think they are. As George Eliot says, 
^^Like an omnibus, we take on board anybody 
and anything which beckons as we pass. We en- 



18 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

tertain God and the Devil on tlie same floor and 
on equal terms. '^ 

How often we read in the Scriptures that 
Jesus was moved with compassion. ^'When He 
saw the multitude, He was moved. '^ Not simply 
touched, but swept as by a storm. He wept over 
Jerusalem, because He saw the people sinning, 
saw them missing the mark, saw the harvest of 
it all. Of course it would be trite and I shall be 
enrolled among those who ask silly and imper- 
tinent questions, but may I venture to ask if any 
of us ever really wept over Boston, or New York, 
or Chicago, or St. Louis, or any lesser city, or . 
town where God gave us our place for service? 
It was a beautiful Jerusalem that Jesus looked 
upon; the temple like a mountain of snow, forty 
and six years in building; palaces for Herod and 
Caiaphas, a grand theater, and a great hippo- 
drome ; three historic towers on the north and east, 
and an acropolis, — a sight to stir the souls of 
men, and an unspeakable anguish to contemplate 
its catastrophe. Some of you have climbed the 
Mount of Olives and marked what yet remains 
of the walls the Saracen builded and the ruins 
of other days. Have you also climbed the hills 
around Boston or Pittsburgh? Have you gone 
to the Metropolitan or Woolworth tower and 
looked upon the riches of our great city, the 
clustered spires of cathedral and university where 
millions of people come and go, and have you 



THE PASSION OF JESUS 19 

wept over those who go down those streets to 
shame and death — the flotsam and jetsam of a 
great city? Or have you cried as Bliicher cried 
from the dome of St. PanPs, in London, ^^What 
a city for pillage!'^ And have you gone down 
to join the crowd in its quest after pelf to wrest 
something for yourself out of the general forage 
and plunder? I hardly dare venture to ask it, but 
if you were to open your desk and take out your 
diary, would there be in it any record of nights 
of anguish and of prayer for lost men such as 
they put down who wrote in the Gospels, the diary 
of the Son of God? ^^At the foot of the cross,'^ 
says Sir Oliver Lodge, ^^ there has been a peren- 
nial experience of relief and renovation. Ours is 
not a creed, it is a passion. Men in every age 
have died for it. In every land where its tale is 
told and with every new sun that dawns, 
drunkards may be found whom it has made sober, 
thieves whom it has taught to be honest, harlots 
whom it has lifted up to chastity, selfish men 
who, touched by its preaching, live by a great 
law of self-sacrifice. It is the root whence blos- 
som great heroisms and charities. All human 
sorrows hide in His wounds. All human self- 
denials lean on His cross.'' 

Well says Heine, ' ' How great a drama is the 
passion of Christ. How glorious a figure is that 
of the Man-God. His words are a balm for all 
the wounds this world can inflict, and the blood 



20 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

that was shed at Golgotha has become a healing 
stream for all that suffer. The white marble gods 
of the Greeks were spattered with His blood and 
they sickened with terror and can never more 
regain their health.'^ 

The simple record of three short years of 

J Christ's life has done more to regenerate and 

soften mankind than all the disquisitions of phi- 

^4osophers and all the exhortations of moralists. 

If proof is wanted of the vital forces that dwell 
in Christ, we find it in the impression He made 
upon the men about Him. They were only fish- 
ermen, sitters at the seat of custom — ^bits of com- 
mon clay, but they caught the spirit and took 
their impulse from Christ. His spirit so wrought 
in them that when He himself had left the earth, 
they became heralds not of a creed but of a pas- 
sion. 

Jesus opened the gates into a new universe. 
He taught us that the cross on which the sinless 
one died for the sinful is the supreme interpreta- 
tion of God. He turned His face to the world in 
the midst of His own suffering and cried, ^^He 
that hath seen me hath seen the Father." In His 
own person He brought a spiritual power and 
dynamic which broke up the old order of the 
pagan world and founded a system based upon 
an uncalculating and overwhelming love. He 
mastered men and events and broke into the 
leaden night with a blazing passion that was vol- 



THE PASSION OF JESUS 21 

canic and irresistible. He broke up tbe order of 
His time to the breaking of His own heart. Well 
says Forsythe, ^^He was an austere man, a severe 
critic, a bom fighter, of choleric wrath and fiery 
scorn, so that the people thought he was Elijah 
or the Baptist. Yet He was gentle to the last 
degree, especially to those ignorant and out of 
the way. Clear, calm, determined and sure of 
His mark. He was the next hour roused to such 
impulsive passion as if He were beside himself. 
But if He let himself go. He always knew where 
He was going. He poured out His soul unto God 
and unto death and He was the friend of publicans 
and sinners.^' 

At the cleansing of the temple. He was so hot 
with imperious haste and mighty indignation that 
from that moment His enemies said, ^^You to the 
death," and they never let up in their persecution 
until they had Him nailed to the Cross. When 
His disciples saw His fiery indignation, we can 
imagine one as saying to the other, ^^Of what 
does this remind you?'^ and the other answers, 
^^It reminds me of the Psalm in which it is writ- 
ten, 'The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up.' '^ 
The visual image of zeal as Coleridge calls it, is a 
boiling pot. The root of the word is in the Greek 
^eo — ^to boil. Could there be a more vivid word to 
describe the boiling over with heat of the pas- 
sions and emotions of the Son of God? Is it any 
wonder that it is written, *^As many as I love, I 



22 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

rebuke and chasten; be zealous therefore and re- 
pent/' The one thing that Jesus could not endure 
was indifference. The words to the church at 
Laodicea almost stagger us, ^^I know thy works, 
that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou 
wert cold or hot. So then because thou art luke- 
warm and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee 
out of my mouth.'' 

What a phrase that is — *^to be eaten up with 
zeal." All fear of what the people or the leaders 
might do unto Him is forgotten. All sense of re- 
serve and lamb-like meekness devoured. For the 
first time we appreciate ^Hhe wrath of the Lamb" 
as we see what He did in His Father's house that 
day. With far-reaching emphasis Alexander 
White says, ^'His holy zeal sustained Him and 
impelled Him all through His life, and the same 
ruling passion was His greatest strength in His 
death." His disciples must have recalled it and 
said to one another even while they forsook him 
and fled, ^^The zeal of His Father's house hath 
eaten Him up." They must have said it to them- 
selves as they stood afar off and saw His cruci- 
fixion consummated. 

Now the Saviour said Himself that it was 
enough for the disciple to be as his Lord. We 
bear His name; we represent His life to the 
world; we are to personify His teachings. How 
can we do that if we ourselves are not ablaze with 
holy passion? It was a flame which was the 



THE PASSION OF JESUS 23 

symbol of Pentecost. Those disciples, dis- 
couraged and ashamed, were to have every barrier 
melted away and to go forward with a blazing 
passion that nothing could stop, until, as tradition 
has itj Paul's zeal consumed his body and his 
head rolled from the block. The rest of 
the disciples had cruel mockings and scourgings 
and imprisonments, their devotion so consuming 
them that they had no heart left for anything save 
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It was not a new 
thing for an absorbing passion to consume the 
lives of men. Love of power had just eaten up 
Julius Caesar ; love of praise had eaten up TuUius 
Cicero ; love of liberty had eaten up Marcus Cato ; 
love of pleasure had consumed Mark Antony. 
Was it any wonder that Paul, consumed by 
a greater passion than any of these, should say, 
*^I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. For 
me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.^' Put 
this over against any purely intellectual concep- 
tion of Christianity, and how frigid all that 
appears. The one thing necessary for every soul 
is to catch his Master's passion. Small wonder 
that Whitefield's cenotaph has carved upon it a 
flaming heart, and that the grave of Adam Clark 
bears similar testimony to a passion which con- 
sumed a life in a blaze of flaming devotion. 

The proposition which I wish to lay down as 
the prerequisite to all evangelistic endeavor is 
that no man can be the herald of his Lord's pas- 



24 HEEALDS OF A PASSION 

sion if he does not himself share it. No man can 
win for God unless he is willing to pay the price 
in blood and tears. I make my plea to the church 
^and the ministry for a consuming zeaL '^No 
heart will long he pure that is not passionate, 
no virtue safe that is not enthusiastic/' Our 
splendid cathedrals are built according to the most 
approved plans of the architects, and our altars 
are set up in noble and stately art. I am ready 
to grant the virtue of apostolic succession to all 
who minister there, but the question which I ask 
with deep heart yearning is this one, Have the 
fires been kindled and are they blazing on the 
altar, or have they gone out and are men now 
shivering in doubt where once God's prophets led 
out His hosts in power? In many places the 
priests of Jehovah seem to be as impotent as the 
priests of Baal to call down the heavenly fires. 
They have poured the waters of doubt over the 
stones and the sacrifice and they stand forsaken 
where once there were cleft skies, and falling 
fires to consume sacrifice and altar and later lick 
up the last drop of the waters of doubt and dem- 
onstrate to all Israel that God and Baal do not 
keep company on the same Olympus. From cry- 
ing ' ' Thus saith the Lord, ' ' and saying with holy 
assurance ^^I know whom I have believed," they 
are shaking limp hands over a credo of faith 
and immortality which has lost its power, and are 
looking behind them with the hope that they may 



THE PASSION OF JESUS 25 

be buttressed by scientific investigation rather 
than the glad assurance of a triumphant faith. 

We preach many sermons about the rejection of 
Christ, and we blame the men of His century, but 
what is the condition with us? We bow before 
the conventional and are smug and comfortable. 
If we had Jesus with us today, would we not find 
Him a great inconvenience, and maybe send Him 
either to jail or to an asylum as a disturber of the 
peace ? Such zeal as His was in the highest degree 
uncomfortable for the dilettanti of His time. 
Even those who represented the Church would 
not abide it, but the record of history is that in 
all its great ages humanity has bridged the gulf 
which threatened it by ^^ walking over the body 
of some fanatic who made himself a highway for 
his race.'' Jesus was a man of intense feeling 
and He never held in His emotions. When He 
saw men robbing their poor neighbors at the seat 
of the money-changers,^He overthrew their tables, 
and lashed with His tongue those who had prosti- 
tuted their opportunities and imposed upon their 
neighbors. When He saw the city given over to 
indifference and men walking holy places with 
stolid heart. He wept. 

We have a great deal to say in our conventions 
and stately assemblies about emotionalism. We 
are greatly fearful lest religion shall seem to 
be a matter of life instead of a matter of creed. 
As a matter of fact, there is no fear whatever in 



26 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

our time that there will be too much emotion 
connected with religion. Even the great evan- 
gelistic meetings are not open to that charge. I 
have been in closest touch with them for the last 
generation, and I am bound to say that I have 
nowhere seen anything which approached emotion- 
alism. I have seen tens of thousands of men 
coming up to shake hands with evangelists, but 
not one in a hundred had even a tear in his eye. 
The impelling motive in most cases was purely 
social or ethical, with no sense of such conviction 
of sin as would blanch the cheek and make men's 
knees knock together. He is a poor student of 
psychology who does not know that the emotions 
must lie at the base of all great thinking or doing. 
Herbert Spencer said, ^^In the genesis of a sys- 
tem of thought the emotional nature is a large 
factor, perhaps as large a factor as the intellec- 
tual. " It is a sad tribute which Charles Darwin 
brings. After an experience which had dwarfed 
his emotional life, he says ^^At the age of thirty 
poetry of many kinds gave me great pleasure 
and music was a great delight. But now for many 
years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry and 
I find Shakespeare so intolerably dull that it 
nauseates me. I have lost my taste for pictures 
and music. The loss of these tastes is a loss of 
happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the 
intellect and more probably to the moral character 
by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature." 



THE PASSION OF JESUS 27 

In Ms essays on ^^ Criticism'^ Matthew Arnold 
says, '^The permanent virtue of religion is that it 
has lighted up morality, that it has applied the 
emotion and inspiration needful for carrying the 
sage along the way perfectly, for carrying the 
ordinary man along it at all.'' Dr. Sheridan 
quotes John Stuart Blackie: ^'The early church 
worked by a fervid moral contagion, not by the 
suasion of cool argument. The Christian method 
of conversion, not by logical arguments but by 
moral contagion and the effusion of the Holy 
Ghost has with the masses of mankind always 
proved itself the most effective." 

Dr. John Watson will not be accused of lack 
of clearness in thought; he says: ^^ Every great 
movement which has stirred the depth of life and 
changed the face of history has sprung from some 
profound sentiment and powerful emotion." Dr. 
Alexander Maclaren, one of the clearest thinkers 
of his time, is moved to say, ^^ There is a kind 
of religious teachers who are always preaching 
down enthusiasm and preaching up what they call 
^ sober ^ standards of feeling' in matters of re- 
ligion. By which, in nine cases out of ten, they 
mean precisely such a tepid condition as is de- 
scribed in much less polite language when the 
Voice from Heaven says, ^Because thou art 
neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my 
mouth. ' I should have thought that the last piece 
of furniture which any Christian Church in the 



28 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

nineteentli century needed was a refrigerator. A 
poker and a pair of bellows would be mucb more 
needful to them. Not to be all aflame is madness, 
if we believe our own creed.'* 

^^He shall baptize you with fire/' and if it does 
anything it will kindle emotion. The great glory 
of the Gospel is to cleanse men's hearts by raising 
their temperature, making them pure because they 
are made warm, and that separates them from 
their evils. 

William James ought to understand the 
psychology of religious life, and he says, in his 
^^ Varieties of Eeligious Experience": ^^I believe 
that feeling is the deeper source of religion, and 
that philosophic and theological formulas are 
secondary products like the translations of a text 
into another tongue." Dr. Jowett voices a great 
truth when he says : ^ ^If the church would be pure, 
the church must be passionate. Elevation of 
character depends upon warmth of affection. A 
fiery heart by the energy of its own heat creates 
a self -preserving atmosphere against the devil." 

Among those liberal denominations which have 
been quite inclined to accept the dictum of Presi- 
dent Eliot that the religion of the future will be 
intellectual and not emotional, that religious 
emotion is the result of defective culture and will 
cease when education and evolution have done 
their work, there is a mighty swing of the pen- 
dulum. They are holding evangelistic services 



THE PASSION OF JESUS 29 

night after night. When the present writer was 
asked to give an address on evangelization before 
one of the important gatherings of one of the 
liberal churches, he asked with a smile, ''Do you 
think you can stand my message?" The reply 
was, ''We must have more vital religion." Of 
all the addresses which I have given, none were 
received with greater apparent fervor than the 
one delivered under such circumstances. 

To feel the thrill of a great love and to be 
profoundly interested in men and things is not 
bad form, it is Christ-like. To warm up to a 
publican and to warm over a Pharisee is the kind 
of business which thrills the heart of God. He 
said there was one thing all men needed, and that 
was conviction. We have our foibles, our weak- 
nesses, our indifferences, our by-plays and our 
avocations. The crying need of the world is a 
few first-class convictions. And what is a con- 
viction? Is it not something that makes a convict 
of you; that is, something that fastens a man 
to one thing so that he is not at liberty to roam 
everywhere to no purpose? Then he can say, 
^'This one thing I believe; this one thing I do." 
A Christian without conviction is powerless and 
is a contradiction of terms. A Christian that pre- 
fers plans of salvation to salvation itself, that 
raises definitions of the nature of Jesus above 
surrender to the joy-giving Saviour is a travesty 
on the Son of God. The seal on Adam Clark's 



30 HEEALDS OF A PASSION 

grave, to which I have referred, is a candle burned 
down to the socket. Underneath are the words 
'^In living for others, I am burned away.'' 
Carlyle's last message, whispered to a friend, was 
^^Give yourself royally.'' Aristotle said, '^No 
great genius was ever without some admixture 
of madness." It was this joy in service, this 
uncalculating devotion which has proven itself 
mighty to change the hearts of men, and the age 
in which it has lived. It was not Erasmus, the 
polished, the learned, the vacillating, the 
mightiest intellect of his time, but it was rough, 
yearning, burning Martin Luther who made Ger- 
many. In his last sermon Joseph Parker said, 
^^As long as the church of God is one of many 
institutions, she will have her little day. She will 
die and that will be all. But just as soon as she 
gets the spirit of Jesus until the world thinks she 
has gone stark mad, then we shall be on the high 
road to capture this planet for Jesus." 

One fears that in some quarters the pulpit has 
lost its nerve and forgotten the evidence of his- 
tory, that whenever Christianity has been most 
convincing she has been most victorious, and 
whenever she has been most apologetic, she has 
been most futile;, and also that it is the schools 
within Christianity which are constructive and 
aggressive, and not the schools that are critical 
and eclectic which have chiefly affected their gen- 
eration. If, as some think, our fathers were too 



THE PASSION OF JESUS 31 

sure about everytliiiig, it would be an immense 
gain if some of their children were absolutely 
certain of anything. It would be a great disaster 
if the intellect of the Church should be so occupied 
in recasting the form of the Scriptures as to have 
no strength left for declaring the Gospel which 
they contain. Is it not time that the strength of 
the ministry were withdrawn from purely intel- 
lectual exercises, from purely intellectual investi- 
gations and destructive criticism and given to 
evangelism? Have we not had enough of re- 
canting? Is it not time for some confessing? We 
are justified in disbelieving the things which have 
not been proven, only if we believe and practice 
upon the things which have been proven. There 
are some who seem to be ready to refuse to believe 
anything which our fathers believed, and are quite 
ready to accept anything if it is not in the Bible. 
A book which denies is supposed to be honest and 
thoughtful, and a book which affirms, it is taken 
for granted, must be narrow and prejudiced. 
Those who doubt everything which the Church has 
held for nineteen centuries give themselves amus- 
ing airs of superiority, and the people who hold 
the heart of the Christian creed are likely to be 
regarded with intellectual pity. There is one thing 
worse than the arrogance of wisdom and that is 
the arrogance of learning, for the learned man 
ought to be broad enough to know better. As a 
matter of fact, there is no more ability in doubts 



32 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

ing than in believing. If there is a bigotry of 
ortliodoxy there is also a bigotry of heterodoxy, 
and the last appears to be the more insolent. 
Why should so many prefer the evidence of non- 
religions persons on faith to those who are its 
chief experimental witnesses? It does not follow 
that because Darwin kaew about earth worms 
that he was an authority on the soul ; or because 
Mr. Huxley was a most lucid teacher of natural 
science that he had any right to say the last word 
on miracles. Even in religion one must be scien- 
tific and depend not upon amateurs but upon 
experts. ^^In the high affairs of faith, are we not 
more likely to arrive at the truth by listening to 
the saints than by listening to persons whose 
admirable studies have been among the lower 
animals ? ' ' John "Watson says there are only two 
provinces of absolutely sure knowledge — one is 
pure mathematics and the other is the experience 
of the soul. ^^If Paul had a right to say ^I,' and 
we allow him to be a conscious being, then he had 
a right to say 'I know.^ And if it be granted 
that he could know anything, he had perfect right 
to finish his sentence, and say, ^I know whom I 
have believed,' and we can do no better than to 
accept the certainty of such experience. ' ' 

Faith is the center of the financial world. From 
the man who sends his goods for money he has 
not seen to the man who accepts the last dictum 
of science, we move in this world by faith. Un- 



THE PASSION OF JESUS 33 

belief blocks the wheels of all progress. Only 
faith can right a ruined world. Only faith can 
make men lay down their arms and pick np the 
ax and the shovel, and faith finds its highest 
exemplification in the matters of the soul. 



Chaptee II 
THE TABLE-TALK OF JESUS 



CHAPTER n 

THE TABKE-TAI.K OF JESUS 

The table-talk of great men is always fascinat- 
ing. It is supposed to be the measure of a man 
when he is among his friends and can speak un- 
hindered by fear of misunderstanding or failure 
to appreciate. It is years since I read the table- 
talk of Martin Luther; from it I gained a new 
idea of the great throbbing heart and the human 
interest of that great leader of the Protestant 
Eeformation. To another generation the table- 
talk of Hazlitt was full of literary surprises and 
nuggets of wisdom, the depository of much that 
would otherwise have been lost to the world, and 
the loss of which woula^ have made the world 
poorer. The master reporter of table-talk is Bos- 
well. It is Boswell who gave Samuel Johnson 
to the w^orld. One hardly knows at times which to 
admire the most — the stern old philosopher or the 
loving scribe, who sets apples of gold in pictures 
of silver. We like to know what men thought it 
worth while to talk about to their friends, — ^what 
were the values that they held to be supreme. 

When there was no reason to trim one's sails to 

37 



38 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

social, political or ecclesiastical trade winds, how 
did they sail their crafts? 

Perhaps there is no remark of Daniel Webster's 
more frequently quoted than the one he is said 
to have made at a table where distinguished 
friends had gathered. One asked, ^^What is the 
most important question you were ever called 
upon to consider f His questioner may have 
thought of the great legal and political questions 
which had been submitted to the great lawyer. 
He may have had in mind some of the grave ques- 
tions concerning our Republic, but Mr. Webster, 
running his eye down the table, asked, '^ Are there 
any outsiders here?'' ^^No, sir, all are your 
friends." With deepest solemnity of manner the 
great man said, ^^The most important question 
that ever engaged my mind is that of my personal 
responsibility to Almighty God." 

I am sure the world is agreed that of all the 
table-talk which has been caught by devout dis- 
ciples from the lips of statesmen and philosophers 
and passed on to a listening and adoring multi- 
tude, none is so full of meaning or read with 
such rapt attention as that which fell from His 
lips who spoke as never man spake. We have 
some of His words reported to us by His friends. 
How we long for the thousands that must have 
dropped by the wayside, or at the morning or 
evening meal. What a sweet hyperbole is that 
of John, ^^And there are also many other things 



THE TABLE-TALK OF JESUS 39 

wHch Jesus did, which if they should be written 
every one, I suppose that even the world itself 
could not contain the books which would be writ- 
ten.'' If the world today could find some new 
word which He thus spoke to His disciples, its 
presses would run night and day until every last 
citizen could have another message from His lips. 
Parables like those which now gladden the world 
must have fallen without stint from His blessed 
lips. A few of them have been preserved for us 
and make us rich indeed, 

Jesus was a famous diner-out. His enemies 
charged upon him, that while John came as an 
ascetic, Jesus was "a, glutton and a wine bibber.'' 
You do not think of it in that fashion, but close 
examination will impress one with the humor of 
Jesus. Who can read His parables, if he reads 
with discrimination, without a smile; and then 
how intense He was. ^^If your eye offend you, 
pluck it out"; "ii your hand offend you, cut it 
off." Go drown yourself rather than say a word 
that shall offend one of these little ones. And 
what paradoxes were His! He that would save 
his life shall lose it. He that would lose his life 
shall save it. It was the heart of the man that 
was thrilling in all His table-talk. It was the love 
of His soul, the zeal that was burning and fairly 
consuming Him that manifests itself here. His 
whole life could be epitomized in the single sen- 
tence ^^He had a passion for saving the lost." 



40 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

And at these wonderful dinner parties, this mes- 
sage thrills out. 

The table-talks of Jesus are not an interlude 
to His passion, they are a part of it. They are 
introduced here to show that in the most intimate 
social relations in life one thought is ever upper- 
most. He never temporized; He never kept the 
yearning of His heart out of sight. Whether He 
talked with Pharisee, or Sadducee, or publican, or 
sinner, in public or in the privacy of their own 
home, before the interview was over He had 
told them in some form the one glorious fact that 
was epitomized in Him — ^^I am come that ye 
might have life and that ye might have it more 
abundantly.'' The table-talks of Jesus are such 
talks as a father might give with his arm around 
the neck of a thoughtless or a sinning child. This 
was what He meant when He said, ^^ Whoso hath 
seen me hath seen the Father." 

Here are two dinner parties that we may first 
consider. After Matthew, the publican, was 
called from his disreputable profession, he did a 
rather brave thing. He gave a farewell dinner 
to his old friends in office to celebrate his going 
away, and he invited Jesus. I suppose he wanted 
the old comrades to see what sort of a man He 
was to whom he had given his allegiance, and it 
may be that he had hopes the Master's presence 
and love would do for them what it had done for 
him. One ahnost wonders at the courage of 



THE TABLE-TALK OF JESUS 41 

Matthew to invite the friends of the old life to 
meet the One who had led him to the new. 
Matthew must have been satisfied that his old 
friends wonld feel at home with Him and he knew 
that whatever Jesus said would be said with a 
kindly heart, with no sense of aloofness, and least 
of all with any sense of the attitude of the Phari- 
see. What do you suppose the scribes and Phari- 
sees, the members of the church, the high-toned 
leaders of Capernaum said when they heard of it? 
Do you wonder that they attacked His disciples 
and said, '^ Why eateth your Master with publicans 
and sinners? What does He have in common with 
them?" You would not expect in our time a lot 
of grafters and men of doubtful reputation to be 
especially eager to meet the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury or the Greek Primate. Li whatever talks 
Jesus had with Matthew before — and he must 
have had many of them — ^we do not know what 
approaches He made, or what Matthew said, but 
at last He came one day to the tax gatherers' 
office and said unto him, ^^ Follow me.'' Matthew 
must have leaped with delight to think that all he 
had done that was selfish and evil was so 
thoroughly forgotten or forgiven that Jesus 
wanted him to be with Him, and when he heard 
that call he left all and followed him. I suppose 
Matthew never forgot his old business and the 
stigma which went with it. I confess there is a 
tug at my heart as I see where this humble dis- 



42 HEEALDS OF A PASSION 

ciple, when he wrote the list of the apostles, put 
in his own name and did not forget to round it 
out by saying ^^And Matthew, the publica/n/' 
Much that He said there we have no record of, 
but with such a company and with such a host, 
we know almost as well as if it were written down, 
what He would have said. We know His stainless 
purity would humble them, but we know also His 
infinite yearning would make itself manifest, so 
that they would see He loved them so that He was 
willing to die for them. That was why publicans 
and sinners drew near to hear Him, that was 
why the common people heard Him gladly. He 
opened His heart to them. He told them of His 
love. You remember how Jesus answered the 
Pharisees who murmured because He had gone 
to Levi's house, ^^They that are whole need not 
the physician, but they that are sick. I came not 
to call the righteous but the sinners to repent- 
ance.'' 

Then there was another dinner. This time He is 
invited to a Pharisee's house. It was after a busy 
day that Jesus had an evening engagement to 
dine with Simon, the Pharisee. That dinner has 
been heard of throughout the world, not because of 
the palace in which it was served and not because 
of the courses which crowded the table, but simply 
because of one broken-hearted woman who was a 
sinner and who intruded herself upon the feast. 
It looks as if she had met Him before and that 



THE TABLE-TALK OF JESUS 43 

she had already some cause for gratitude. Can 
you not picture her — you who have seen her like 
in the great city? Do you not understand why 
she came there? Can you not see the pictures of 
the days of innocence, which floated before her 
eyes, maybe of a home of prayer; of an anxious 
father and mother from whom she had turned; 
of the promises made to them which she had 
broken; of the promises made to her which others 
had broken? And so the poor girl with broken 
heart and broken life steals in to the feast. 
"Whether she had told Him her story before or 
not, we do not know. Whether she had heard that 
wonderful story of the lost boy, we cannot tell, 
but at any rate, in some way, hope stirs in her 
heart and a changed life stretches before her, 
pointed out by the tender love of the Man who 
sits there at the feast. Her attitude is not one 
of importunity, it is rather one of passionate 
gratitude for something already granted her. 
Maybe she is just leaving Capernaum to go back 
to her mother and begin a new life, and this is 
her last chance of showing her love. You picture 
the scene — the guests reclining on couches around 
the board, their feet resting on cushions, and then 
this poor woman throwing herself with passion- 
ate sobbing at the feet of the Master. The veil 
is off her face and the fastenings from her hair. 
If anything was necessary, these are the things 
which tell of her life. An alabaster box of oint- 



44 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

ment she pours on His feet and with her glorious 
hair she wipes them and presses her lips on them 
with adoring devotion. 

Of course everybody is disturbed. Simon is 
courteous and condescending to his guest. The 
neighbors are saying, ^^This prophet must have 
known about the woman. Why does He let her 
touch him?" Simon's thoughts are plainly 
stamped upon his face. And now listen, — ^ ' Simon, 
I have somewhat to say to thee.'' With some 
restraint and rather sadly, Simon says, '^Eabbi, 
say on." And then comes the story of the big 
debtor and the small one and how the gracious 
creditor forgave them both, and the query which 
of the two loved the giver most. We hear Simon 
saying, ^^That does not interest me, but I presume 
the one to whom he forgave most." Now Simon, 
it is your turn. It may be the Master's hand crept 
down his seamless robe and rested upon the head 
of the penitent, ^'I would not have mentioned it, 
Simon, but when I came to your house, you did 
not even offer me water for my feet; but this 
woman has wet my feet with her tears and wiped 
them with her hair. You gave me no kiss of 
greeting, but she, from the time I came in, has 
not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil you 
did not anoint, but she hath anointed my feet with 
ointment. Wherefore I saw unto you, her sins 
which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much ; 
but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth 



THE TABLE-TALK OF JESUS 45 

little/' Is there any story that shows more 
tenderly the yearning of the Master's heart? 
There are many who identify this woman with 
Mary Magdalen, and that fact is ^'imbedded in 
centuries of Christian art and literature/' and 
the name will always persist as a synonym for a 
fallen but penitent woman. If it is true, is it 
not a beautiful and thrilling thing to see how the 
devotion of that once abandoned woman never 
failed by so much as a jot until the end? She was 
one of the few who saw Him die on Calvary, and 
regardless of the contumely and insult which 
might be heaped upon her, she followed His body 
to the grave and was the first at the sepulchre on 
the glorious Easter morning. With agonizing 
heart, she cries to him whom she took to be the 
gardener; ^^Sir, if thou hast borne Him hence, 
tell me where and I will take him away/' and 
with the same voice that at first spoke peace to 
her repentant soul, her Lord spoke the one word 
' ^ Mary ! ' ' Nobody else ever said it that way ; into 
no other voice could such pure and tender solici- 
tude be pressed. In an instant she knew the glad 
truth that her Lord was risen, and she fell at 
His feet crying, ^^My Master, my Master!" 

How anybody could think of that dinner in the 
house of Simon, the Pharisee, and what the Master 
said, and all that flowed out of it and still re- 
main indifferent to those who long for the saving 
grace which comes from unstinted love must 



46 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

surely pass human kaowledge. It is a heart of 
stone tha^t can remain stoKd, when he thinks of 
what happened and how the joy of it never faded 
away, but was crowned with glory on the resur- 
rection morning. Small wonder that when Renan 
was looking around for someone whom he could 
make responsible for a resurrection which he 
wished to deny, he should have cried, ^^ Divine 
power of love, sacred moments in which the pas- 
sion of an hallucinated woman gives to the world 
a resurrected God!" Is it strange that Renan 's 
book and his theories were buried with him, while 
the whole Christian world stands in adoring 
wonder at Mary's side? 

It was at another Pharisee's table that He smote 
the heart of the cold and proud by telling of those 
who give tithes of what amounts to nothing — the 
mint and anise and cummin — and neglect the 
mightier matters of the law. When His host com- 
plains that he had not performed the usual ablu- 
tion, He showed the folly of those who were more 
anxious to have clean hands than clean hearts, 
who looked at the outside of the cup but paid 
no attention to the filth that was within. 

It was at the table of Simon, the lep^r, that 
another Mary showed a love without bound or 
limit, bom in homely fellowship, perfected at her 
brother's grave. Perhaps the cap of the alabaster 
box refused to open, and in her haste she broke 



THE TABLE-TALK OF JESUS 47 

the box and poured the ointment, fit for a king, 
upon the head she loved. 

It was when the utilitarian spirit flared out, as 
it has done in all the days since ; it was when those 
who take no account of love and sacrifice and holy 
ideals but who weigh everything on the scales of 
self-interest and measure everything by worldly 
standards — it was when such people were taking 
all merit out of a noble act and making it only an 
impetuous movement of an ill-balanced mind, that 
Jesus lifted this little woman upon a pedestal so 
high that all the world will see her till the crack 
of doom! Can anybody have any question as to 
what Jesus thinks of uncalculating service? Can 
anybody ever think of offering Jesus anything but 
their best after this ? There it stands ; let it never 
be blotted out. Let it be written on the fleshly 
tablet of every devoted heart that is willing to 
pay the price that his Lord demands — '^ Verily I 
say unto you, wheresoever this gospel shall be 
preached throughout the whole world, there shall 
also this, that this woman hath done, be told for 
a memorial of her, ' ^ There is at least one pedestal 
in the temple of fame which God has set up that 
will never be vacant. With reverence let us muse 
upon the reason! 

Those who are troubled by many things, who 
are examples of what Emerson said, ^'Things are 
in the saddle and they ride mankind,'^ let them 
stand behind the Master at Martha's simple feast. 



48 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

** Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus/' 
Three different types. The anxious housekeeper, 
with a sense of responsibility, who brings things 
to pass, a good manager, a capable woman who 
has to be responsible for things. Here is one type 
of those who hide their own feelings and never 
like to see others express theirs. Sentiment does 
not appeal to her and she is quite inclined to 
take to task any whom she calls mystical, emo- 
tional, sentimental. Martha has her good points, 
may she never disappear from the family. The 
wheels of daily life would drive heavily without 
her. When her dear old hands are folded, more 
tears will be shed for her possibly than she has 
shed for others, but if Martha can only under- 
stand the gentle reproof of the Saviour, she will 
know that the sister whom she calls a dreamer, 
who indulges in holy contemplation, and nourishes 
a devout soul, is one of the pure in heart who 
see God and are thereby the more lovable. *^She 
hath chosen the good j)art which shall not be 
taken from her.^^ Let Martha and Mary twine 
their arms around each other. They will each 
be the stronger for the other's presence. Jesus 
says, '^ Don't fret, Martha, put the first things 
first, and all things shall work together for good/' 
As for Lazarus, for whom the feast is given, 
from him we hear nothing. Paterson Smith re- 
calls the suggestion that he was the young ruler 
who once made the great refusal, whom Jesus 



THE TABLE-TALK OF JESUS 49 

beholding loved and kissed him on tjie brow. Per- 
haps that is not true, but at any rate, Jesus loved 
him with the yearning of a great heart, and Martha 
and Mary knew that as much as He loved them, 
Lazarus was preeminent, for they named him to 
Jesus, ^^Him whom thou lovest.^' From that 
dinner table may the love which gives each heart 
its place around the family board be passed to 
every home ! 

Of all the Master's words at table, surely none 
were so precious as those He spoke at the last 
supper, when He was host himself. He and His 
disciples knew it was the last talk He would have 
with them before He faced the tragedy which they 
could neither appreciate nor understand. We are 
minded of a scene three hundred years before 
when the sacred ship had come back from Delos 
and the eleven had stricken off his chains that 
Socrates might drink the fatal hemlock, and his 
jailer was saying, ^^He was the gentlest and best 
that ever came here.'' But beautiful as was that 
scene against the clear blue of the Grecian sky 
and beautiful as was that cheery message of him 
who was going out upon a great adventure, this is 
an hour before which all other human farewells 
shine with a lessening ray. 

Since there were no servants to do it, Jesus had 
washed His disciples' feet and said to them, ^^He 
that would be chief among you, let him be the 



50 HEBALDS OF A PASSION 

servant of all.'' Judas has gone out ^^and it was 
night.'' 

What does he say as a pattern for all those 
hours when the disciples talk together? The one 
word which is in the air when words can be but 
few, the one word which rolls in infinite reitera- 
tion from His lips is the word which was the center 
of His life and of His kingdom — ^^Love." Here 
is a new command — ' ' That ye love one another as 
I tave loved you." Here is the measure of your 
discipleship — ^'Ye are my disciples if ye love one 
another. The- measure of your love for me will be 
the measure of your union with me. If ye love 
me, ye will keep my commandments." And then 
He falls to talking about the same thing that 
Socrates talked about, only with an assurance and 
depth of meaning which Socrates never knew, and 
with good reason. 

We are inclined to say with Philip of Spain, 
who, when asked if he had noticed the eclipse, 
said, ^^No, I am so busy with things down here 
that I have no time to look up. ' ' There are many 
who are restive at any word concerning the future 
life. Not so Jesus. He revealed in it. His last 
table-talk was pitched to the tune of it — *^Let not 
your heart be troubled. I am going away from 
you. In my Father's house are many mansions. 
I am going to prepare a home for you and we are 
all of us going to be there. Here you will be 



THE TABLE-TALK OF JESUS 51 

lonely and you will be troubled, but I shall be 
thinking of you and waiting for you. ' ' 

If we could live on here without headache or 
heartache ; if we could feel no want and know no 
poverty; if no bitter words were spoken, and no 
unkindly acts done ; if nobody grew old, and love 
was never disappointed ; if no red flag ever waved, 
and the sexton never plied his spade, what a world 
this would be! But Jesus said over the table at 
the last supper, ^^I am going to get a place like 
that ready for you/^ 

Sam Johnson said he didn't like Wesley, for 
just as he got his legs under the table for a long 
talk, Wesley would run off to see some old woman 
who was in want. Here the days and nights of 
friendship are short. Here we cry, ^'AU hail,'^ 
and in the next instant, ^^Good-by. It is time to 
go.'' Jesus said that His was a land of perfect 
fellowship, and there was never to be any night 
with its darkness and separation. We say, ^^I 
shall always be thinking of you," but Jesus said 
more; He said, ^^I shall always be with you. 
You will not see me, but I will be there, closer 
than breathmg, nearer than hands and feet. The 
Holy Spirit, one with me and the Father, will 
walk and talk with you. He will lead you into the 
paths of truth. He will be your comforter in 
trouble, your wisdom in ignorance, and will bring 
you safely through. Lo, I am with you always^ 
even unto the end of the world." 



52 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

After that they sang a song — His song — ^but the 
message of it all was ^^ death does not make any 
difference with love.^' We can say to those to 
whom our hearts are bound : 

"Thee I loved always, 
I love still but thee, 
And thee will I love 
Through eternity." 

Death is only crossing a seam in the carpet, 
passing through an open door. Here and there 
and always, love never faileth. These are the 
messages which fell from His lips when He who 
spake as never man spake, talked with His friends 
and with the world out of His heart. Do you 
not feel the passion of them and do they not awake 
an answering passion in your own soul? 



Chapteb III 
HEEALDS OF A PASSION 



CHAPTER III 

HEIL^DS OF A PASSION 

We cannot be heralds of our Lord's passion 
unless we enter into the fellowship of His suffer- 
ing. He has left behind Him in the path He trod 
a message written in His blood and fastened with 
a nail to His cross — '^If any man will come after 
me, let him deny himself and take up his cross 
daily and follow me. ' ' We long for His triumph 
and are fain to have some humble part in it, but 
the condition on which we gain it is found in the 
words, ^^If so be that we suffer with Him, that 
we may be also glorified together." If we may 
attain unto that any price will be cheap. The 
apostle was so convinced of that that he cries, ^^I 
reckon that the sufferings of this present time are 
not worthy to be compared with the glory that 
shall be revealed to us-ward." How can any of 
us dare to represent Christ to men if we do not 
know something of the thrill of His passion, if we 
do not yearn after the souls of men so that we can 
cry concerning our own flock, as John Knox cried 
for Scotland, ^^Give me — or I die!" This and 
no other is the passion which has transformed the 
world. Paul had caught it from his Master when 

55 



56 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

he exclaimed, *^I could wish that I myself were 
anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, 
my kinsmen according to the flesh.'' 

It is a wonder that we can go through the sub- 
lime task which is laid upon us as heralds of a 
passion with a sense that it is an ordinary and 
common task. ^^I marvel," said the old Puritan, 
^^how I can preach stolidly and coldly, how I can 
let men alone in their sins, and that I do not go 
to them and beseech them for the Lord's sake — ? 
however they take it and whatever pains or trouble 
it should cause me. When I come out of my 
pulpit, I am not accused of want of ornaments 
or elegance, nor of letting fall an unhandsome 
word, but my conscience asketh me ^How could 
you speak of life and death with such a heart? 
How couldst thou preach of heaven and hell in 
such a careless and sleepy manner? Truly this 
peal of the conscience doth ring in my ears, ^0 
Lord, do that on our own souls that thou wouldst 
use us to do on the souls of others.' " Are we not 
to get a verdict? Are we not sent out, in modem 
phrase, to actually sell goods? What boots it 
us that when we come down from the pulpit steps 
gracious ladies and cultured men thank us for 
the sermon, but do not surrender their souls to 
the will of their Lord? Is preaching a proclama- 
tion of a sublime and insistent truth, or is it 
only a lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice 
and can play well on an instrument? 



HERALDS OF A PASSION 57 

Morley says of Gladstone, who gained in his 
great Midlothian campaign, when over seventy, 
one of the greatest oratorical triumphs of history, 
that ^^he bore his hearers through long changes 
of strenuous periods as if he were now a hunter 
and now an eager bird of prey, now a charioteer 
of fiery steeds kept well in hand, and now and 
again we seemed to hear the pity or dark wrath 
of a prophet with the mighty rushing of wind and 
the fire running along the ground.'^ Would that 
apply to much of our preaching today? As Dr. 
Jackson asks, ^^Are we not growing too quiet, too 
tame, too subdued? Are we not sacrificing to 
mere literary primness and prettiness and to a 
mistaken self-restraint ? Our preaching, ' ' he says, 
^4s too dry-eyed; there is no red blood visible 
under the skin. The commonplace is not vital- 
ized; the thin wire of words is charged with no 
current that quickens and thrills." Men are often 
apparently eager for some theoretical truth but 
oblivious of the real purpose for which the truth 
is presented. 

Dr. Bonar, after listening to a minister who 
was preaching with great gusto, said to him, ^^ You 
love to preach, don't you?" ^^Yes, indeed, I do." 
^^But," said Bonar, ^^ do you love the men to 
whom you preach?" We do not have to choose 
between a fervid ignorance and a passionless 
culture. Thank God, we may have both a 
knowledge and a zeal, a well trained mind and a 



58 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

warm heart. The man who knows the most ought 
to feel the most and do the most. The material 
which he gets together ought not to be a mass of 
dead fuel, he ought to touch it with the prophetic 
glow that shall set it ablaze. Only the divine 
fire wrought out in his own experience and con- 
viction can do that. A recent writer to ministers 
has said, ^^The cold-blooded pedantry which 
affects to look down on all religious zeal as relig- 
ious rant is being suffered to inflict the gravest 
injury upon the whole life and work of the church, 
and not least upon the life and work of the 
preacher." After all, nothing is so touching as 
an honest enthusiasm, and other things being 
equal, it is the man who is himself greatly moved 
and is not ashamed to let it be seen, who will 
greatly move others. Therefore, if a preacher 
has received from God a rich, strong, emotional 
nature, let him give no heed to the silly clatter 
of those who tell him he has no right to work on 
men's feelings — as if religion could do anything 
for a man whose feelings are not worked on ! Let 
him give his zeal full play and he will find it 
mighty to the opening of many doors against 
which his most profound logic will beat itself in 
vain. In all true preaching spiritual passion is an 
essential element. 

After all, it matters little how excellent the fuel 
if the fire be out. All that a man has of intellec- 
tual strength to the last ounce, he can put into 



HERALDS OF A PASSION 59 

the work of preaching, but intellect alone can 
never make a preacher, and the man with no more 
heart than can be made out of brains is in the 
wrong place in the pulpit. Dr. Chalmers once 
compared the sermons of the Moderates to a fine 
winter's day: ^^They were short, clear and cold. 
Brevity is good, and clearness is better, but the 
coldness is fatal. Moonlight preaching ripens no 
harvest.'' 

Dr. Jackson reminds us that whoever will go 
over the great names in the history of the Chris- 
tian pulpit will discover that the passion to win 
men is the ultimate fountain of all preaching that 
is of the prophetic order. Of Eutherford a con- 
temporary said, ^^Many a time I thought he would 
have flown out of the pulpit when he came to speak 
of Jesus Chrisf John Knox was supported in 
his old age by attendants to his place in the pulpit, 
but when he arose to speak, the divine passion 
blazed in his soul, until, one of his friends said, 
^^So mighty was he in his yearning that I thought 
he would break the pulpit into bits." Of Joseph 
AUeine it was said, ^^ Infinite and insatiable greed 
for the conversion of souls, he preached with far- 
reaching voice, flashing eye and a soul on fire with 
love." 

Is not St. Paul the best of all examples for the 
preacher? Hear him calling himself a servant 
of Jesus Christ, *^ separated unto the Gospel of 
God." He could say, ^^This one thing I do.'^ 



60 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

The divine imperative was upon his soul. ' ^ I must 
see Eome/^ he cried, because he was eager there 
to preach the gospel; and shouts with holy fervor, 
^^I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for 
it is the power of God unto salvation." The 
record shows that Paul was constrained by the 
word. His message burned like a fire in his bones. 
His passion to win men was a divine constraint 
which gave him no rest. By the space of three 
years, he told the Ephesian elders, ^^I ceased not 
to admonish every one night and day with tears.'' 
When his friends urged him not to go to Jeru- 
salem, he cried, ^^I am ready not to be bound only, 
but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the 
Lord Jesus." Does anyone doubt that a pas- 
sion like that had been kindled by the altar fire 
of Christ's own life? 

What words are these from the hot heart of 
an English teacher of preachers ! ^ ^ Shall we re- 
peat an old sermon? Yes, if you can recover the 
heat in which it was first made, but if your soul 
is no longer kindled by it, if the fire is gone out 
of it, and it is now but a poor dead cinder, then 
let it be put straightway in the place of cinders. 
People do not care whether your sermon is old 
or new; the only question is, ^Is it alive?' Alas 
for the minister who forces the simple folks to 
say, ^What he says is faultless enough, but it 
leaves me strangely cold.' So will it be if the 
truth which once was a glowing conviction at 



HERALDS OF A PASSION 61 

wMcli men wanned their hands becomes but a heap 
of ashes from which the last glint of fire has died 
ont. That is the tragedy of more pulpits than 
one cares to think of/' 

The greatest thing in the world is love. That 
never faileth. It is the one thing which He asks 
of us. We cannot simulate it, if we wear a mask 
it wiU slip sometime. If love for man thrills our 
every act the world will take knowledge of us that 
we have been with Jesus. 



Chaptee rv 

HOLY BOLDNESS 



CHAPTER IV 

HOLY BOLDNESS 

The trouble with most Christian workers — 
ministers and laymen — is that they are afraid, and 
now as of old fear bringeth a snare. We are 
afraid of what people will say, for the moment a 
man does anything different from the ordinary, 
that moment he is the target for criticism. Some 
will call him too zealous, too personal and too 
insistent. It is only perfect love and perfect con- 
fidence and perfect abandon to the will of God 
that casteth out fear and that brings the per- 
sonal victory. The New Testament has a great 
deal to say about boldness. We often quote the 
passage '^They took knowledge of them that they 
had been with Jesus." But why did theyj The 
record says, '^When they saw the boldness of 
Peter and John.'^ So it seems that boldness was 
associated in the thought of the people with the 
life of Jesus. Again the apostle says that he 
declared the truth '^with all boldness,'' and the ef- 
fect of that truth was a thrilling one on himself as 
well as on those who heard. Conviction breeds 
conviction. Hear the apostle say that ^^In noth- 
ing we shall be ashamed, but that with all bold- 

65 



66 HERALDS OP A PASSION 

ness as always so now Christ shall be magnified 
in my body whether by life or by death.'' You 
cannot hold a man like that — ^no pent-up Utica 
contracts his powers. 

So everywhere through the teachings of the 
apostles, we are challenged to a boldness that 
is not arrogance, or simply self-assertion, or dog- 
matism, but an authority in boldness that has its 
birth in a sense of the mighty consequences that 
are at issue — a sense of the importance and im- 
minence of a decision that outreaches time and 
thought. No doubt there were friends who stood 
by and said to John the Baptist, ''Be careful 
what you say to Herod." But John thundered 
the truth into the very teeth of the royal sinner 
though it cost him his own head. ^'Mind what 
you say to Felix,'' Paul's anxious companions 
might have said, but Paul reasoned of righteous- 
ness and of judgment to come until the knees of 
the proud ruler knocked together. ^'We boldly 
proclaim the word," says the apostle again and 
again. It was the same spirit in which he said 
concerning himself and all of us that we were to 
come boldly to the throne of Christ and find help 
in every time of need. 

Thousands of ministers are cribbed, cabined 
and confined because they do not dare to make 
the great adventure. Their faith fails them — 
they will not put it to the test. If they could only 
remember, '4f thou hast faith like a grain of 



HOLY BOLDNESS 67 

mustard seed thou shalt say to this mountain, re- 
move hence to yonder place and it shall remove.'' 
So many men who will not leave the safe harbor 
and put with God to sea ! They are conventional 
and smug and comfortable. They do not know 
the joy of a great emprize. In this matter I am 
speaking out of my own experience. I know the 
temptations which face every minister through 
the weakness of the flesh. Some of us are nat- 
urally timid and shrink from the great contests 
where there must be a decision — a victory or a 
defeat. We would rather avoid it if we can, but 
if we do, we shall only know the shallows of life. 
For the comfort of some of my brethren, I 
do not mind saying that again and again in my 
early ministry, I was put to the test which almost 
overwhelmed me. More than once I have walked 
around a city block before I could get up courage 
to go to the door and talk to a man about his soul's 
interest. I shall never forget the struggle of my 
own soul when I was asked to stand on the steps 
of the City Hall in New York and to address an 
audience of many thousands of men in the open. 
As chairman of the Committee on Outdoor Service 
for the Evangelistic Committee of the city, it was 
suggested that it would greatly help our cause 
and secure for our work helpful publicity if we 
could arrange for a service on the steps of the 
City Hall. When I asked permission, I was passed 
on by the city ofi&cials from one department to 



68 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

another, but at last permission was granted, and 
we were told that we should have all the police 
protection that was necessary. I was quite aware 
that in my audience were many who were more 
inclined to scoff than to pray. I knew there were 
anarchists and socialists by the hundred in front 
of me, who cared for none of these things. It 
was not an easy matter to screw my courage to 
the sticking point and to say with shut teeth, as 
Garrison said long before, ^^I will not equivocate 
and I will be heard,'' and say without fear in the 
face of all classes and conditions of men ^^ There 
is none other name given under heaven among men 
whereby ye must be saved but the name of Jesus, '^ 
or to say with Peter on the day of Pentecost, 
^'This same Jesus ye have taken and by wicked 
hands have crucified." 

It was not an easy thing for me, with a tem- 
perament that shrinks from notoriety, to stand 
on the seat of an automobile in Wall Street, under 
the windows of J. P. Morgan's office, and preach 
the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ to a surg- 
ing crowd; to stand on the steps of the Custom 
House, the historic spot where the great political 
leaders, presidents and senators of the United 
States had stood, and to speak to thousands of 
men, who looked up into my face, concerning the 
one thing to which I had been called in the Chris- 
tian ministry. 

But out of every one of these experiences, which 



HOLY BOLDNESS 69 

were so trying to me that I could hardly gather 
courage to speak, there came such grace into my 
own heart that in a few minutes I forgot all 
about the crowd and only remembered my mes- 
sage and my Master. S(3ores came to me as I 
spoke at these places and told me how they had 
decided to go back to their old manner of life and 
to accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Some 
of them were back-sliders, some had been super- 
intendents and local preachers and class leaders, 
but they had come into the city and had hidden 
themselves away. They had said, ^^I have worked 
hard for many years, now I will rest.'' In rest- 
ing it soon happened that they lost their zeal, 
and soon their love f orHhe Master had become cold 
and indifferent. I had the pleasure of knowing 
that in many cases they came back to their old love 
and united themselves for vital service with the 
Church of the Living God. And many who heard 
the Grospel for the first time — aliens by wilful 
choice and wicked life from the kingdom of God 
— came back to their Father's house and to His 
yearning love. 

It was when I stood on the steps of the City 
Hall, bringing home to the members of the church, 
with all the force of which I was capable, the 
fact that they were chosen of God for the world's 
redemption and that they needed to throw them- 
selves with uncalculating devotion into the work, 
that I repeated several times the two words which 



70 HEEALDS OF A PASSION 

stand at the head of this chapter, and urged that 
those who were followers of Jesus, who counted 
not His own life dear unto Himself, should them- 
selves be able to proclaim with boldness His 
truths and to stop short of no sacrifice for Him. 
I delivered my soul with great earnestness of the 
message which it seemed to me Grod had laid upon 
my heart. It was some weeks after that when 
one of the most successful preachers in America 
laid his hand on my shoulder and said, ^'I owe you 
a debt I shall never be able to pay,, and all on 
account of two words which you used, but which 
I believe were sent by the Holy Spirit. When I 
went home after hearing your message, those two 
words kept ringing in my ears, ^Holy boldness, 
holy boldness,^ and I said to myself, 'You are a 
coward. You do not dare to venture. You will 
not do what you know you ought to do. You are 
afraid of that fine congregation that gathers at 
your morning service. You want to observe all 
the proprieties and have the most dignified and 
proper service. You would not dare to preach a 
message straight to their hearts and to urge them 
to give themselves to Jesus Christ on the spot. 
You would not dare to send your deacons among 
that congregation and ask them to urge men and 
women to be reconciled to God. ' I thought about 
it and I prayed about it, and the more I thought 
and the more I prayed, the more the conviction 
laid hold upon me that I must make the great 



HOLY BOLDNESS 71 

adventure. In order to preserve my own sonl 
alive, I must cast myself into the breach. I re- 
membered how He said, ^If any man will save his 
life, he shall lose it, and if he will lose his life 
for my sake and the GospePs, he shall find it.' 
On the next Sabbath morning I called my officials 
into the study and told them that I was greatly 
moved. I felt that something ought to be done 
and done at once; I feared that perhaps they 
would not like it and that the congregation might 
feel like resenting it, but I had in my heart 
the same feeling which Luther had when he said, 
*Here I stand, God help me, I can do no other.' 
I told them all that was on my heart, and we had 
a time of great heart searching and agony before 
God. I asked them to spend the week in thought 
and in prayer, and on the next Sabbath morning 
as we gathered the atmosphere seemed to be sur- 
charged with spiritual conviction. ^I want you,' 
I said, 'tX) help me take the message this morning 
and bring it to the thought and conscience of the 
people for immediate action.' " 

So, my friend said, when he had given his mes- 
sage as hot with yearning as he knew how to 
give it, he called the officials to the front, and, in 
the presence of the congregation, charged them to 
carry the message of the Master to their friends 
among the people. ^^It was such an hour as we 
had never witnessed in the church. Strong men 
bowed their heads upon the pews before them 



72 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

and many of my leaders were in tears. When I 
gave the invitation for men and women to stand 
for Christ and proclaim their choice of Him as 
their life leader, one and another and another 
responded nntil more than forty men and women 
came to the front, and clasping my hand, made 
a solemn promise to be true to God. I count that,'^ 
said the preacher, ^^the greatest hour in my min- 
istry hitherto, and, if I am ever tempted to be 
unfaithful, I hope I shall hear those words 'holy 
boldness' ringing in my ears, and that I may 
never prove recreant to the call of my Lord.'' 



Chapter V 
CULTURE 



CHAPTER V 

CULTURE 
A LOAD OR A LIFT 

May my tongue falter and my pen forget its 
cunning before I say or write one word that 
hinders any man in his search for the deepest and 
broadest culture of which his nature is capable. 
True culture should increase our capacity, en- 
large our ability and quicken our perceptions. 
"When properly applied, it is the handmaid of 
religion as well as the husbandman of the mind. 
But is it possible that such a beneficent thing 
may be throttled in its purpose, so that it becomes 
a source of spiritual death instead of life? Here 
the appeal must be not to theory but to fact. Does 
anyone doubt that German Kultur came to be 
a blight upon the individual and the world? Ger- 
many was unequaled in her intellectual attain- 
ments of a certain kind, but the effect of it all 
on her scholars in the atrophy of spiritual vision 
and power will ever remain as an indictment of 
a godless culture that cannot be overlooked or 
explained away. Are we not right then in asking 
ourselves, '^Is the culture which I have and to 
which I aspire strengthening my devotion to those 

75 



76 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

things wMch are pure and lovely and of good 
report? Are the most cultured men I know the 
most devoted to the highest interest of humanity 
and the most uncalculating and unselfish in the 
measure of their service?'' Surely there can be 
no doubt that the standard of unselfish service is 
the one by which, in the last analysis, the great- 
ness of men will be determined. There has been 
no dissent to the sublime affirmation of the Gali- 
lean Teacher — ^'I am among you as he that 
serveth,'' and ^^he that would be chief among you, 
let him be the servant of all." When you apply 
this standard, the record of culture is not always 
pleasant reading. Emerson made his literary 
bow to the world in his Harvard Phi Beta Kappa 
oration on the alienation of men of letters from 
the affairs of national life. 

Like wealth and power of any sort, culture has 
its insidious temptations. First of all, it is com- 
pelled to be analytical and critical. It takes things 
to pieces. Its flowers lose their perfume in the 
study of calyx and sepal. There is no song in 
the nightingale 's throat when the scalpel is search- 
ing for the source of its melody. It comes to the 
city of Man-Soul as most of our railroads come 
to town, through the purlieus of poverty and 
waste. Because it does not find beauty there, it 
is tempted to think the city has none. Because the 
city's soul is not in the street, it is quite inclined 
to believe that it has none. It loves to say it is 



A LOAD OR A LIFT 77 

a searclier after truth for truth's sake, and is im- 
patient with the pragmatic test. 

What is truth for truth's sake? If you mean 
a truth that is sterile, that does not eventuate in 
life, then it is an impertinence in the sight of 
God and man to talk of that kind of truth. From 
the standpoint of a life spent in association with 
Greek and Eoman philosophers, who freely en- 
couraged suicide and lived lives whose abomina- 
tions smelled to heaven, Pilate had good reason 
when he asked of the fettered Man before him 
*^What is truth?'' He found out, as any man 
of culture needs to find out — ^^For this cause 
was I born, that I might witness to the trnth. 
/ am the truth." The only truth that counts in 
the realm of morals and religion is felt truth — 
truth that is vital and imperative. A formal 
creed is only the skin of truth stuffed. It is as 
useless as a last year's bird nest on the boughs 
of time. It is only when truth becomes incarnate 
that the world bows its knee to it and accepts it. 
That was what happened when a brown-frocked 
monk was walking up the holy staircase at Eome, 
and when the heart of an Oxford don was 
strangely warmed in Aldersgate Street. 

Another temptation to which culture is 
especially susceptible is pride. It is fair to say 
that those who most reveal it are those whose 
culture is really limited, but, alas, there are so 
many of that kind! It is always true that 



78 HEEALDS OF A PASSION 

knowledge may be proud that it knows so muchy 
but wisdom will be humble that it knows so little. 
There was a never-to-be-forgotten day when a 
freshman in another college strolled into the 
museum at Harvard. It was the opening of a 
fairyland to him. Eager-eyed he was gazing at 
specimen after specimen and wishing that he knew 
more about them, when a sweet-faced man, whose 
smile would have made summer in the Arctic, was 
standing at his side. Captivated by the man, the 
freshman heard him say, ^^ These are my pets. 
May I tell you about them?' ' He lifted a trilobite 
and told the ignorant boy how that fossil was old 
when Pharaoh builded the pyramids and Attio 
poets sang. With infinite patience he answered 
questions which must have seemed foolish. When 
the wonderful man was interrupted and called 
away, the freshman asked a guide, ^^Who is that 
manr^ ^^ Don't you know — that is Agassiz!^' 

It is always true that a little learning is a dan- 
gerous thing and most of us with all our culture 
have yet but little knowledge compared with what 
is before us, and yet we are proud. Edison has 
said, ^^No man knows one seven-billionth part of 
anything." There is an arrogance of ignorance 
which we greatly condemn, but there is an arro- 
gance of culture which ought with greater justice 
to be condemned, because the cultured man ought 
to know better. 



A LOAD OR A LIFT 79 

Culture is tempted to interest itself in tlie form 
of things. It needs to be reminded 

*^ 'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant/' 

It is more life and fuller which is the need of the 
hour. John Stuart Mill was the greatest thinking 
machine in England in the last century. At twelve 
years of age he knew more Greek than most of the 
professors in Oxford, and at fourteen the greatest 
mathematicians took off their hats to him. At the 
morning walk with his father, at the mature age 
of thirteen, they discussed the problem of Gib- 
bon ^s ^^Rise and Fall of the Eoman Empire.'' 
When I was a boy in college, few names were more 
quoted in cultured circles than his, but I have 
seldom heard his name mentioned in the last 
twenty years. His latest historian says of him, 
^ * There was no fire under his boiler. ' ' His culture 
was aloof and academic. He had no thrill of 
human interest, no glow of conviction. Toward 
the world's needs, he was as heartless as a graven 
image. When asked how he would feel if the prin- 
ciples he advocated were universally accepted, he 
said, *^I would not feeV He was the consum- 
mate flower of the culture of his time, but it was 
the culture of the dilettanti. 

Perhaps no two men of the same age better 
illustrate the difference between culture and ser- 
vice than Erasmus and Luther. Erasmus was the 
greatest scholar of his day. There were none to 



80 HEEAEDS OF A PASSION 

challenge his supremacy. He thorougUy agreed 
with the principles of Martin Lnther, but when 
Luther's friends asked him to come out in the 
open and stand with him he said, ^^Why should 
I lose my living or my headT' He realized all the 
abominations of the Church of Eome. He said 
that instead of saying their prayers the monks 
were eating gingerbread that they might take 
more kindly to their beer, but he left Luther to 
fight alone for God and men. If he had only stood 
with the little monk at the Diet of Worms he could 
have changed the thought of half the world and 
projected himself for the help of men through 
untold millenniums. Luther sighed over his de- 
flection and might have chanted with Browning in 
his Lost Leader, 

*^Just for a handful of silver he left us, 
Just for a riband to stick on his coat.'' 

If you want to see culture as a load, read 
Froude^s ^^ Times of Erasmus and Luther. ^^ If 
you wish to see culture as a lift, there is Henry 
Drummond, the scholar; ^* Chinese '^ Gordon, the 
soldier, 

"Who always and everywhere 
Gave his help to the weak, 
His sympathy to the suffering, 
His substance to the poor, 
And his heart to God." 

There is Phillips Brooks, the preacher, and Bor- 
den P. Bowne, the greatest philosopher that 
America has produced and one of the most faith- 



A LOAD OR A LIFT 81 

ful, eager-hearted Christians I have ever known. 

In Conferences and Assemblies and Synods 
throughout the country, I have had ministers by 
the score ask, ^^Why is it that with deeper, more 
scholarly culture and training, I am less effective 
in moving men to GodT' The answer is not far 
to seek — ^your culture has become a load instead 
of a lift. While you have been busy with the de- 
lights of scholarship the fire has gone out upon 
the altar. Thus so many of the prophets of God 
stand shivering around the altars where the fires 
have failed and are as impotent as were the 
priests of Baal to call down the fires of God from 
the ascenting heavens. 

Knowledge ought to be power. Culture, if it is 
to be a lift and not a load, must be transmuted 
into service for God and man. When the culture 
of the mind exceeds the culture of the soul, a 
man is educated beyond his capacity. He is doing 
too much business for his capital. It is a prosti- 
tution of talent when he who knows the most does 
the least. It might be well for the best of us 
with all our culture to lay our finger on our lips 
and listen to the greatest Teacher of all the ages, 
Son of Mary and Son of God, who says to His 
friends in words which the world will never allow 
to be discounted or to perish, ^^If any man will do 
my will, he shall know of the doctrine.'^ 



Chapteb VI 
THE PASSION OF THE PEOPHETS 




CHAPTER VI 

THE PASSION OF THE PROPHETS 

No one can look at Sargent ^s picture of the 
Prophets in the Boston Public Library without 
feeling a tug at his soul. What glorious men they 
were — ^laymen all of them — gatherers of sycamore 
fruit, cup bearers to the king, but whatever else 
they did, one great absorbing passion for the 
Israel of God was on their souls. They were not 
only forth-tellers of the truth^ but they lived it 
out. There was Israel turning from God, giving 
herself up to idols, and they were sore distressed. 
See stern old Elijah^ the greatest of them aU, for 
whom to this day evefy'cSitd ctf 'l^brH^ sets a 
chair at his solemn feast, the man whom they say 
locked up by his prayers the cisterns of the 
heavens and carried the keys of them for three 
long years in his pocket ! How shall he let Israel 
and its king go on to their destruction? A king is 
seeking him but he will not temporize his message, 
''Art thou he that troubleth Israel r' Elijah 
answered, '^Not I, but you and your father's 
house have wrought the overthrow of this peo- 
ple. ' ' And he told him that in Naboth 's vineyard, 
where of all places on God's green earth the king 

85 



86 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

would least desire to meet the prophet of Jehovah. 
See him on Carmel calling back Israel to her old- 
time faith. He will not temporize or equivocate, 
stern old prophet of righteousness. He will not 
let things drift. It is a time of decision. ^ ^ Choose 
ye this day whom you will serve ; if God be God, 
serve Him, and if Baal, serve him.'' More of the 
Saviour's challenge — decide something, don't 
drift ! And then that a race to Jezreel — a king in 
a chariot bested by a prophet on foot, and the 
prophet oversped by the rain drops of the mercy 
of God! Small wonder that when John the Bap- 
tist came, they said it was Elijah, and when Jesus 
came they said it was the spirit of Elijah and the 
thunderous voice of John the Baptist rolled into 
one. 

And here is Isaiah, perhaps the mostgifte^ of 
all the prophets, a man of great natural endow- 
ments, intensified and consecrated to the loftiest 
ends by his self -surrender to God. He had the 
intellectual grasp of a great statesman and the 
fervid imagination of a great poet. He was a 
seer who could see. How his yearning soul por- 
trayed the love of God and His righteous indig- 
nation! What irony, what ridicule, what chal- 
lenge to heights of spiritual experience! How 
utterly all his gifts were mastered as he sought to 
win Israel back to God. His were the words that 
Jesus loved to quote, and no prophetic words are 
oftener on the lips of preachers today than the 



THE PASSION OF THE PROPHETS 87 

words of this marvelous prophet. He is the great 
evangelist, the proclaimer of the good things. 
*^Ho, everyone that thirsteth come ye to the 
waters, buy wine and milk without money and 
without price/' And those Messianic prophecies 
— ^^He was wounded for our transgressions; the 
chastisement of our peace was laid upon him, and, 
by his stripes are we healed. ' ' May my soul stand 
in holy wonder before such a flaming heart and 
fiery tongue until I myself have caught the blaze 
of it! 

Of Jeremiah it was an English preacher who 
said, ^^ However many Isaiahs there may have 
been, I am glad there was only one Jeremiah.'' 
He seems to think that one weeping prophet and 
one set of jeremiads was enough, but would it not 
tend toward the multiplication of good shepherds 
who would give their lives for the sheep if there 
were many who could come to say ^^0 that my 
head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of 
tears that I might weep day and night for the 
slain of the daughter of my people. '^ 

What shall I say more for the time would fail 
me to tell Daniel and Nahum and Amos, gatherer 
of sycamore fruit, and Jonah, and Habakkuk, 
whose prayer, Webster said, was the most jub-^ 
limetEmg'in literature, and all the long list of the 
prophets dow» to Maiachi, who with a challenge 
which bums in our soul, cries, '^Will a man rob 
God/' and all the yearning of his soul condensed 



88 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

into one glorious prophecy at wMcli the heart of 
God's people will bound for joy until they see the 
prophet himself in the land of his fruition, ^^Then 
they that feared the Lord spake often one to 
another and the Lord harkened and heard it, and 
a book of remembrance was written before him 
for them that feared the Lord and that thought 
upon His name, and they shall be mine, saith the 
Lord of Hosts, in that day when I make up my 
jewels and I will spare them as a man spareth 
his own son that serveth him.'^ 



Chaptee VII 
THE PASSION OF GREAT EVANGELISTS 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PASSION OF THE GREAT EVANGELISTS 

Where shall we begin the story of evangelism? 
Who were the great evangelists? We can only 
touch upon one here and there, for their number 
is legion. Prophets, apostles, the church fathers, 
the reformers themselves were all what they were 
because of the great evangel which trembled upon 
their lips. Perhaps we cannot do better than to 
mention first that wonderful evangelist, John 
Bunyan. How we love him! How we have 
marched with him to the city of the great Eang, 
the new Jerusalem! He has led us all the way 
into the green pastures by the delectable moun- 
tains, past the slough of despond, and all the won- 
derful path until we come in sight of the City of 
the Saved. All this he crowded into a narrow 
cell in Bedford Jail. It was there he heard sweet 
angels singing lauds for him, and because of what 
happened there, he would be willing to go back and 
stay ^^ until the moss grows over my eyebrows 
rather than in anywise to deny my Lord.'^ Look 
at his wonderful characters and the names they 
bear — Mr. Great Heart, Christian, Faithful, and 
Mr. Valiant-f or-Truth. How many souls has John 

91 



92 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

Bunyan led out of the City of Destruction? He 
could not have led others if he had not gone that 
way himself. It is out of his own great expe- 
rience that he is speaking, and no man can lead 
others unless he himself is led of God. John 
Bunyan had known the sinful life, but with what 
fulness and depth he came to know his Saviour is 
found in the sweet story of Grace Abounding. 
May we all stand at last with Mr. Valiant-for- 
Truth and see the heavens filled with the chariots 
of God and hear the trumpets sound for us on 
the farther shore. 

Next we turn for a moment to the man who 
traveled more miles to bring the gospel to the 
lost, as Birrell says, ^Hhan any man who ever 
bestrode a beast '^; a man whose devotion was 
marvelous from the days when he was a student 
in Lincoln College in Oxford, but who says that 
all that availed him nothing until that day which 
Christendom will never allow to pass out of its 
sight, when his heart was ^^ strangely warmed'' 
and he went out to do for England more than was 
done by the armies and navies of England in the 
whole length of his life. What courage and what 
toil! Ease and he had parted company, and as 
for money, he lived upon a pittance and gave 
away more than $200,000. Abused and maligned 
in his time, he could say, ^^I leave my reputation 
where I leave my soul — ^in the hands of God.'' 
He said to his brother Charles, ^^When I devoted 



PASSION OF GREAT EVANGELISTS 93 

to God my ease, my time, my labor, did I exempt 
my reputation/^ So he traveled 225,000 miles 
and preached 2,400 sermons, and, amid misrepre- 
sentation and abuse, never knowing the delights 
of love at home, subject to incessant attacks of 
the mob, the pulpit and the press, he did not abate 
a jot of heart or hope until he had reached the age 
of eighty-eight and ceased at once to labor and 
to live. Canon Farrar says, ^^Overwhelming 
evidence exists to show that the church and peo- 
ple of England in his day were dull, vapid and 
soulless and the preaching was careless, the land 
steeped in immorality. To Wesley was granted 
the task for which he was set apart by enviable 
consecration — ^the task which even an archangel 
might have envied him, of awakening a mighty 
revival of religious life in those dead pulpits in 
that slumbering church and moribund society. 
His was the religious sincerity which not only 
formed the Wesley Community but, working 
through the heart of the very church which had 
despised him, he flashed fire into her whitening 
embers. It was he who discovered that lost secret 
of Christianity — the compulsion of human souls. 
He was the voice that cried over the valley of dry 
bones, ' Come from the four winds, oh spirit, and 
breathe upon the slain that they may live.' '^ In 
Westminster Abbey, that great temple of silence 
and reconciliation, one may read three of his 
great sayings : one fuU of holy knowledge, ^^I look 



94 HEEALDS OF A PASSION 

on all the world as my parish"; another full of 
triumphant confidence, ' ' God buries His workmen 
but His work goes on"; the third, his cry in age 
and feebleness extreme, the best of all, is ^'Grod 
is with us." 

In the long list of great evangelists, no name 
stands out clearer in the light of an absorbing 
passion than that of Whitefield. To him two con- 
tinents acknowledge their debt and keep green 
the traditions of his marvelous power. Most of 
the leaders and charmers of men have come to 
their service from under the low lintels of the 
poor, and Whitefield was no exception. Uniting 
with Wesley to form the Holy Club at Oxford, he 
was at first morbid in his spiritual earnestness. 
He wore patched clothing, ate coarse food, prayed 
under the trees far into the winter nights in such 
agony of soul that the sweat ran down his face. 
At last he laid hold on God by simple faith. He 
had traveled his own via dolorosa and through 
pain he came to peace ; thereby he was enabled to 
help others who journey alone in the cypress path. 

Ordained at twenty-two, he began to preach 
immediately with tremendous effect. Probably 
no man since the days of Paul excelled him in 
sacred eloquence. Said John Newton, *'If you 
ask me who is the second preacher in the world, I 
do not know; but if you ask me who is the first, 
there can be but one answer." 

Franklin went to hear him plead for his orphan 



PASSION OF GREAT EVANGELISTS 95 

school in Georgia, but resolved he would give 
nothing. After listening a little, he decided to 
give his coppers, then his silver and then his gold, 
and emptied his pockets into it when the plate 
was passed. Hopkinson left his money at home 
purposely, but was moved to borrow of his neigh- 
bors. Garrick said he could repeat the word 
*^ Mesopotamia" so that it moved him to tears. 

But after all has been said about his eloquence, 
his power with men depended most upon the pas- 
sion of his soul which absorbed every lesser am- 
bition and used every God-given power to lead 
men to the personal choice of Jesus Christ as 
Saviour and Lord. He was a kindred spirit with 
Jonathan Edwards in this regard and together 
they led the Great Awakening of our young Ee- 
pubhc. No man was more untiring in devotion 
than he. At one time he writes, ^^Lord when thou 
seest me in danger of nestling down put a thorn 
in tender pity into my nest,'^ and again, '^I am 
determined to go on until I drop, to die fighting 
though it be on my stumps.'^ 

When nations forget their dependence upon 
Him and personal allegiance is lightly held and 
the individual conscience is benumbed, when form 
triumphs over spirit, and worship degenerates 
into heartless ceremonials, God sends his mes- 
sengers of flame. So came the old prophets to 
Israel; so came Savonarola to Italy; Luther to 
Germany; Knox to Scotland; Wesley to England, 



96 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

Edwards and Whitefield to America. In such 
manner God in all ages has called back His people 
from apostasy. 

"When Whitefield preached in Boston, the city 
was at white heat. Twenty thousand heard him 
in Philadelphia, and 30,000 crowded Boston Com- 
mon to listen to him. Mr. Cooper, pastor in 
Boston, said, ^' Under Whitefield's preaching 
more people came to me in one week in deep 
concern about their souls than in the whole 
twenty-four years of my ministry.^' Mr. Prince, 
another pastor, said in substance the same thing. 
Mr. Webb said about 1,000 in deep conviction 
came to him in three months. The pastors unite 
in saying the same spirit prevailed for more than 
a year and a half after Whitefield had gone. 

Speaking of his passion, Dr. Parsons said of 
him, in a sermon preached on the day of his death : 
**We were convinced that he believed the message 
he brought to be of the last importance." On the 
marble cenotaph above his dust at Newburyport 
these words are carved: ^^As a soldier of the 
Cross, humble, devout, ardent, he put on the whole 
armor of God, preferring the honor of Christ to 
his own interest, repose, reputation or life." In 
thirty-four years he crossed the Atlantic thirteen 
times and preached 18,000 sermons. For his 
seal he had a lambent flame and under it the 
motto, ^^Let us seek heaven." 

In his time, Whitefield, like Wesley, was ac- 



PASSION OF GEEAT EVANGELISTS 97 

cused of almost every crime. As Dr. Squintum, 
he was caricatured by Foot, the actor, from one 
end of Great Britain to the other, even after he 
was in his grave. He was called the clerical pick- 
pocket, and accused of appropriating his great 
collections to himself, but those accusations only 
live in history to fasten obloquy upon those who 
made them. In Cowper^s words, 

"He loved the world that hated him. The tear 
That dropped upon his Bible was sincere. 
Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife 
His only answer was a blameless life.'' 

The record of his last hours at Newburyport is 
thrilling beyond words to tell. He is preaching 
his last sermon. His subject is ^^ Faith and 
Works." With far carrying tones he cries, 
' ' Works, Works, a man get to heaven by Works ! 
I would as soon think of climbing to the moon on 
a rope of sand!'^ But his voice begins to fail, ^*I 
go," he said, ^^to my everlasting rest. My sun has 
risen, shone, and is setting. Nay, it is about to 
rise and shine forever. I have not lived in vain,, 
and though I could live to preach Christ a thou- 
sand years, I die to be with Him, which to me is far 
better." He was to preach that night, but he felt 
he could not. He took his candle to go up to bed, 
but midway on the outside stairs he paused with 
his candle in his hand. Answering the importu- 
nity of the people, he spoke with the passion of 
his blessed Lord until the candle burned down to 



98 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

its socket and went out. Would that a picture of 
that scene at Fewburyport might hang in every 
preacher's study in America! He went up to his 
room and to an agonizing night, then 

"Just as the sun in all his state 
Dlumined the eastern skies 
He passed through glory's morning gate 
And walked in Paradise." 

Whitefield was no organizer like Wesley. He was 
the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ^^ Pre- 
pare ye the way of the Lord,'^ and America owes 
him a debt which it does not fully appreciate and 
which it can never repay. 

Time would fail me to tell of Fox and Tennant 
and Brainerd ; of Finney, losing his strength that 
he might gain his power; of Moody saying, 
^^ There shall be one man completely consecrated 
to show the world what God can do with a soul 
entirely given up to His service; and scores of 
men, some of whom have finished their evangel in 
victory, and others who still move the people up 
to God, both in the pulpit and out of it. They 
are the heralds of a passion which stopped not at 
the Cross, and they shall share here and hereafter 
the glory and benediction of their Lord.'^ 



Chapter VIII 
THE TEACHER'S PASSION 



CHAPTER Vni 

THE teacher's PASSION 

There is one miracle of grace by which a wan- 
dering soul comes back to God. There is another 
by which a sonl itself touched with infinite love 
feels an absorbing passion to go after another 
who, like itself, had gone astray. There is no 
place where one who has felt this high commission 
can hope to win greater trophies than in the Sun- 
day School. Birrell says of John Wesley that 
^^he was out of breath pursuing souls." If only 
the same panting desire might be born in the heart 
of every Sunday School teacher! 

Thompson pictures, in ^^The Hound of 
Heaven," God out after the soul; pursuing it up 
and down the universe. The hunted one flees, as 
men so constantly flee, from the highest and seeks 
refuge in every human thing that could be called at 
all good, but the point of the poem is that the good 
must never hide men from the best. So the soul 
is never allowed to rest in lower things; just as 
the soul would nestle in some new covert, she is 
turned from it by the imperious hesf of all that 
claims her for its own. 

Now in the teacher's life there are many oppor- 

101 



102 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

tunities to advance the good, to develop intellec- 
tual taste, to encourage the scholar's thirst for 
learning, but none of these must stand in the way 
of the one thing for which the teacher is called to 
his high eminence. Nor literature, nor ideals of 
any sort can take the place of the one ideal — the 
perfect life in Christ Jesus. So the Sunday 
School of itself is not an end; teaching of itself 
is not an end. The result of the Sunday School 
is the production of life and character, and the 
end of teaching is that Christ may be formed in 
each scholar, the hope of glory. 

In order to teach such lessons, it goes without 
saying that one must have experience in the thing 
he teaches, so that no one may turn upon him and 
say, '^Sayest thou this thing of thyself or did 
another tell it thee of me?" Has he first hand 
information? Does he speak out of a rich and 
full experience, which has been wrought in him 
by holy ventures and has entered through the 
travail of his soul into the substance of his life? 
To a heart which has such an experience, what a 
challenge presents itself! Twenty-seven millions 
of young people in this country who are not in the 
Sunday School and almost as many millions more 
already within its reach ! 

Of old one crusade followed another. That the 
sepulchre of Jesus might be won from the Sara- 
cen, Peter the Hermit cried '^Grod wills it," and 
hundreds of thousands of men marched on the 



THE TEACHER'S PASSION 103 

first crusade. Fifty years later a million and a 
quarter set out for Jerusalem, no one of whom 
saw the Holy Land. So one crusade followed 
another, and little enough resulted from them. 
Perhaps the saddest of all crusades was the Chil- 
dren's Crusade in 1212. An army of thirty thou- 
sand French children, unarmed, led by a boy 
named Stephen, set out for the Holy Land by way 
of Marseilles, and a similar army of German 
children marched over the Alps and came to the 
Mediterranean. They thought the sea would di- 
vide for them and they would pass over to the 
Holy Land in safety. Most of them perished on 
the march, or were lost at sea, or were sold into 
slavery. 

Now the time has come for a crusade for the 
children. A challenge of unspeakable importance 
rests upon the heart of the church. Shall we be 
able to win these millions to the service of the 
Master? You may rear buildings, but the torch 
of the incendiary may consume them or the temp- 
est may overthrow them, but when we put our 
torch upon the plastic soul of youth, it will remain 
there when the wax has changed to adamant. We 
must not bungle our work. We see men and 
women who were the subject of malpractice in 
their youth by careless or ignorant servant or 
physician. They will walk the path of life to the 
grave and every step they will go with pain. Lifers 
functions instead of being a joy have become an 



104 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

agony. Sad as is that picture, it is not for a 
moment to be compared with the work of one who 
bungles in the forming and transforming of the 
soul, who brings only human diagnosis and rem- 
edy in the place of the wisdom and power of God. 
Every teacher must realize that her students are 
looking not simply into her face but into her soul, 
that the thing she is is greater than the science 
she teaches. Garfield said if he could sit on one 
end of a log and have Mark Hopkins, ^President 
of Williams College, on the other, it would be all 
the college he required. 

Here as nowhere else comes the gospel of the 
personal touch. I cannot bear to think that the 
soul of a child should be either mishandled or 
neglected. That thrilling story of human expe- 
rience, ^^ Twice Born Men," was called in England 
'^Broken Earthenware.'^ I do not want the fair 
vase of life broken. Thank God it sometimes 
happens that a broken vase may be mended by 
His grace so that it can hold the water of life, but 
let me protect and surround the vase so that it 
may not be shattered. It is a sad comment on the 
passion and the efficiency of our teaching force 
that one out of every five who come to the Sunday 
School is won to Christ in the School, one after 
they leave the School, and three are not won at 
all. It is time we taught our children that they 
are never too young to surrender their hearts to 
Jesus Christ. It is time our teachers felt that 



THE TEACHER'S PASSION 105 

their work has been in the most important part 
failure, unless by personal experience their mem- 
bers are coming to know Him whom to know 
aright is life eternal. 



Chapter IX 
THE PASSION OF THE CHURCH 



CHAPTER IX 

THE PASSION OF THE CHURCH 

If one were asked what should be the passion of 
the church, there could be but one answer from 
progressive or conservative, and that would be 
^Ho serve the world." The Master's thrilling 
challenge would rise to our lips, '^Ye are the light 
of the world, ye are the salt of the earth. ' ' The 
church ought not to be divided into two camps 
when it comes to the application of this great 
principle. At heart, we believe, the Church is 
really one, though it has often happened that, as 
in the old story, men looking at different sides of 
the same shield have called it silver or gold and 
have fallen to blows over their differences, when 
if each had taken the viewpoint of the other, their 
differences would have disappeared. May we 
venture an irenic word with the hope that it may 
serve in the end to make matters a little clearer 
and to unite for a common purpose forces which 
have seemed at times to be arrayed against each 
other? 

A little careful thought will show that there is 
no antagonism between a personal and a social 
gospel. It is no doubt true that men have been 

109 



110 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

slow to realize that in addition to the burden 
which rests upon them from a sense of personal 
wrong-doingy they are also face to face with 
corporate iniquities and national seMshness and 
organized brute force, and that somebody is to 
blame for it. ^^We are all diseased and with our 
surfeiting and wanton waste have brought our- 
selves into a burning fever, and we must bleed for 
it/^ It is doubtless true that a conscience awak- 
ened to responsibility in social guilt will soon 
focus itself upon the more immediate circle of life 
about its possessor and bring to sight the hideous 
consequences of his own self-seeking, unfairness, 
indulgence and distrust. But it is also true that 
in most cases, the conscience does not become 
awakened to a sense of social guilt until it has 
become sensitive by a» personal touch with Him 
who is the illumination of the soul. We do not 
come to love God through love to men, but we 
come to love men through love to God, and then 
the two are seen to be in essence one. 

The great task which the church has is to bring 
men first to loyalty to Jesus Christ as Saviour and 
Lord; from that will flow the second loyalty to 
God's world, to do justly, to love mercy and to 
walk humbly with Him, and with that will go the 
passion to spend and to be spent for those for 
whom Christ thought it not beneath Him to go 
himself to the cross, and who said, ''If any man 
will come after me, let him deny himself and take 



THE PASSION OF THE CHURCH 111 

up his cross daily and follow me/^ There is a 
third loyalty to which our attention is called, 
namely, loyalty to the Church, to prayer, the study 
of the Bible, the worship of God's house, the fel- 
lowship which conies with a life of love. No one 
will accuse Henry Sloane Coffin of Union Theolog- 
ical Seminary with not having the modern view- 
point. He says : ^^Eeligion is not primarily some- 
thing useful, but something fruitful. It is not a 
means of improving mankind alongside of other 
means, such as education, art, politics and moral- 
ity ; it is the parent of them all — their fountain of 
life. It is not one among several factors cultivat- 
ing the soil of humanity, it is the source of its fer- 
tility. We are busy today directing the flow of 
Christian motives into many trenches to irrigate 
tracts of life which hitherto have been desert. 
And the church must stand then, through its min- 
istry, not simply as a mere instructor imparting 
facts; the pulpit stands for the application of 
truth to create character. The minister preaches 
not to make men wise about books, or scientific dis- 
coveries, but to give them the power and grace of 
an endless life. The final test in preaching does 
not then lie in the fact imparted, but in the use of 
any fact to create an ennobled life.^^ Dr. Crocker 
has well said, ^'When the teacher has set a fact in 
the mind, like a brick in the wall, he has practically 
finished his work, but the preacher must plant 
that fact in the soil of the soul to grow as the seed 



112 HEEALDS OF A PASSION 

of a new life. ' ^ It is true that the great need of 
the time is a social conscience, but what is a social 
conscience? Is it something concerned only with 
hours and wages and profits and conveniences? 
We certainly need a corporate conscience, so that 
we will not permit corporations to do what indi- 
viduals have no right to do. But the social con- 
science that we need is one that shall concern 
itself primarily with those social duties and obli- 
gations out of which grow a noble life — a con- 
science about prayer and worship and Christian 
nurture, and not a social conscience that only 
concerns itself in a fair division of things. The 
stability of society is not dependent primarily on 
industrial conditions but on religious duties and 
spiritual ideals. 

Dr. Roberts truly says, ^* There are such things 
as social or collective sins, but conscience does not 
deal with them on that plane. Sin is an intensely 
individual thing and the man who has had a con- 
troversy with his conscience knows that it is the 
ambassador within him, not of a certain social 
order, but of the moral order of the whole uni- 
verse. It is not the mere reverberation in a man^s 
soul of a social order evolved by way of a natural 
selection; conscience is native, elemental, primi- 
tive. It is impossible to get behind the beginning 
of it. The thing which invests wrong with wrong- 
ness, and right with rightness and speaks in the 



THE PASSION OF THE CHUECH 113 

imperative mood is an indigenous thing, ante- 
cedent to the most primitive society.'' 

Roger Babson affirms: ^ ^Religion is both the 
anchor and the rudder of prosperity. The real 
security of the nation is not its militia, but its 
religion. The real protectors of our homes are 
not the policemen but rather the preachers. Only 
as religion saves the world, can we save ourselves. 
A religious spirit makes better employers, better 
workers, and a better public spirit with which to 
deal. Furthermore, without such a religious 
spirit, all legislative, cooperative and other plans 
are of no avail. Religion is to the world what a 
spring is to a watch, and the sooner it is generally 
recognized the more people will be healthy, happy 
and prosperous." This man of business makes 
bold to say that the three things which the busi- 
ness world, the world of labor and of capital need 
are not the nostrums of socialism but spiritual 
power, faith and prayer. We hear, and properly, 
a very great deal about the material form in which 
Christianity should express itself, but are we not 
in danger of putting so much emphasis on works 
that we forget the source of conduct? If we are 
to have fruit, must we not realize that fruitage 
depends upon rootage? What will the hand do 
if the heart ceases to beat? If we have no wealth 
of soul to give, of what use will mechanics be? 

One of the most illuminating of modern writers 
has said, ^'The most urgent demand is not for 



114 HEEALDS OF A PASSION 

service, but for spirituality. A soul fed from on 
high will certainly bow down and lift the lowly, but 
a generation that has lost faith in God and ceased 
to love Jesus will not serve humanity. ' ' The gos- 
pel of Jesus was nothing more nor less than the 
gospel of the inner life. His whole inaugural, the 
declaration of His purpose in the world could be 
condensed into a single sentence, ^^I am come that 
they might have life and that they might have it 
more abundantly. ' ^ The beatitudes are not bless- 
ings upon belief, they even go deeper than conduct 
and service; they go down to the roots of life. 
What are His parables — ^nothing more nor less 
than pictures of life ; the leaven, the mustard seed, 
the wise virgin, the used talents, the good Samari- 
tan. The abundance of the soul life is the thing 
which He came to bring, and so far as Jesus Him- 
self was concerned, it was not His teachings — 
though they were the most sublime ever uttered 
— but the spirit of His life. When He examined 
Peter for his ordination, He did not ask him ques- 
tions of creed or ethics, or doctrines of any sort; 
the only question which He asked, and that He 
repeated again and again, was ^^Lovest thou me?'' 
It was the things that Jesus stood for that won 
the disciples at the first, or in any other age of the 
world's history. It was a life. It was He who 
said, ^*I am the life." The world has had many 
great teachers, but who goes to a life of self-denial 
along a path so hot as to blister their feet because 



THE PASSION OF THE CHUECH 115 

of these teachings? What was it that sent Father 
Damien to the leper, Paton to the South Sea 
Islands, Morrison to China, Livingstone to Africa, 
Grenfell to Labrador? Nothing but a personal 
love for a personal Saviour. May we always re- 
member that we must give ourselves to the needy 
and to the oppressed. A Unitarian has written, 
^* There is more danger that the source of per- 
sonal piety will dry up than that children will 
starve or go naked, ' ^ 

There is deep wisdom in the words of Paterson 
Smith in his ^^ People's Life of Christ'': ^^Men are 
teaching laws of economics and principles of 
utilitarianism and ethical persuasions on the duty 
of doing good, but they are leaving out Christ; 
and they are not succeeding and they know it. 
Our political and industrial and social leaders feel 
their impotence, their lack of some great spiritual 
impulse to make their projects work. It is re- 
ligion that is needed. It is not enough to tell us 
to do right. We want a pressing motive and a 
power." 

There is only one challenge I wish to give — ^Is 
thy heart as my heart? If it be, give me thy 
hand. There is room for almost infinite differ- 
ences of opinion but there can never be any dif- 
ference in the matter of a whole-hearted devotion 
to the Kingdom of God. The dying Scott said to 
Lockhart, his son-in-law, ^^Grive yourself royally.*' 
Paul, speaking of Jesus Christ, says in a verse 



116 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

that is matchless and stupendous, ** Christ gave 
himself/^ Dying millionaires have given away 
their millions only when Death, the grim archer, 
had sent his arrow to their hearts and the rigors 
of death had loosed their grasp upon their treas- 
ure. But Jesus spent His life in giving himself. 
If, after having spent a life in ease and self- 
indulgence, in toying with our tasks and in shirk- 
ing all we could we should come up to the heavenly 
gate, over which is written, ' ' These are they who 
came out of great tribulation, ' ' would we have the 
effrontery to pass in? Would we not ask for some 
lesser gate where we might hide our selfish and 
diminished head? But Heaven has no such gate. 
Its twelve gates are all alike, one motto is over 
them and one word is the password at each. 
When a rich man died a neighbor asked, '^How 
much did he leave, '^ and the village wag replied, 
**He left every cent." All you can hold in your 
cold dead hand is what you have given away! 
Well says Bishop Quayle, ' ' The angel at the gate 
of life will make inquiry of every comer, ' Did you 
spend all your estate?' '^ When Ian MacLaren's 
*^ Doctor of the Old School' ' was dying, he faintly 
murmured, ^'I am tired to death!'' He had used 
up every ounce of his strength and ability to help 
those to whom he ministered as a good physician. 
There is Whitefield utilizing the last bit of his 
strength, stopping on the stairs on the way to his 
chamber to preach a last message to the crowd at 



THE PASSION OF THE CHUKCH 117 

Newburyport, and then going upstairs to die. 
There is Wesley, riding more miles for the Master 
than any man who ever bestrode a beast, giving 
all he had of money and energy and time, and at 
the last leaving, as his biographer says, ^^a 
good library, a well-worn clergyman's gown, a 
mneh abused reputation and so — ^the Methodist 
Church.'^ Paul used that gigantic word of his 
Lord, ^^He emptied Himself to the last drop of 
His blood,'' and as for Paul himself, hear his own 
modest epitome of his service — ^^In stripes above 
measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. 
Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes 
save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once 
was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night 
and a day I have been in the deep. In journeyings 
often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in 
perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the 
heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the 
wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among 
false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in 
watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings 
often, in cold and nakedness." 

Let us put that up against the spirit of our own 
devotion that it may be a challenge that shall 
nerve us in times when the fire bums low and the 
path of dalliance seems to be strewn with flowers. 

Which shall we choose to be, an Ananias or a 
Paul, — an Ananias keeping back part of the price 
and dying of shame, or to empty ourselves for all 



118 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

time and be filled of God's grace for all eternity? 
The apostle says, ^^What things were gain I 
counted lost for Christ.'^ He takes no credit to 
himself, but he says, ^^ Though I preached the 
gospel I have nothing to glory of, for necessity 
is laid upon me. Yea, woe is unto me if I preach 
not the gospel. ' ' Having seen the vision, he must 
be true to it, and the one thing that glorified his 
life down to j:he time when he said, ^^I have fought 
a good fight, I have finished my course, I have 
kept the faith,'' was the blessed fact that he ^^was 
not disobedient unto the heavenly vision/' Do 
we not need to have something of his burden? 
We are not to misunderstand this. We shall know 
something of what he said, that though he was 
cast down, he was not forsaken; though he was 
poor, he was making many rich; though he was 
in tears, yet was he also in bounding joy. The 
very measure of his anxiety and longing became, 
on the other hand, the measure of his delight and 
victory when the desire of his heart was accom- 
plished. So we would hear him saying, ^^I have 
great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart, 
for I could wish that myself were accursed from 
Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to 
the flesh." It is the same spirit which a father 
knows when he would rather have lost his life 
than that his own son should be killed, the same 
spirit which a mother feels when she will gladly 
wear herself out for the sake of her childj and will 



THE PASSION OF THE CHURCH 119 

not leave him even at the prison door or the 
scaffold's step. It is for this spirit that we yearn. 
When the world sees it, it will be no longer faith- 
less bnt believing. 



Chapter X 
THE PASSION FOE SERVICE 



CHAPTER X 

THE PASSIOK FOR SERVICE 

It goes without saying that whosoever will fol- 
low his Master must live a life of service. '^I am 
among you as he that serveth,'^ said the Master, 
and washing His disciples' feet, He set the pace 
for helpful, gracious ministries of every sort. 
What we need is a vast number of charter mem- 
bers for the Society of the Towel and the Basin. 
When an imperious mother asked of Jesus that 
one of her sons should be on His right hand and 
the other on His left in His Kingdom, she was 
speaking from the standpoint of the same selfish- 
ness and greed which we are facing today. We 
find men who want preeminence even in the min- 
istry. There are plenty of us who would like to be 
major prophets, but who among us wants to be 
classed as a minor prophet? Who envies the man 
who is knovni as James, the less? It was very 
significant that when some time ago, reporters 
asked men in the streets of New York who was the 
greatest man in America, different men were 
named because a different valuation was placed 
upon the effect of their lives, but the basis on 
which each of them was named was not of position, 

123 



124 HEEALDS OF A PASSION 

of ojBBce, of power, or of money, but only on the 
basis of service. Whatever difference there might 
be in the estimate of their achievements, there 
was no difference as to the cause of tme greatness. 
It has always been so — the history of the world 
shows plainly that it has counted as its greatest 
men those who have most truly served. Every 
institution and every organization is measured by 
its service to mankind. When a nation proves 
itself unfitted for a task, it must pass away, and 
the same thing is true of the Church. What a 
fulfilment of this declaration we have seen in the 
last few years ! 

"Lord, where are kings and empires now 
Of old that went and camef 

He hath put down the mighty from their seats and 
exalted those of low degree. We have seen many 
of the thrones of Europe emptied, discarded 
crowns by the dozen have fallen into the scrap 
heap. Why all this? Because they were useless, 
because God said, '^I am tired of kings — I suffer 
them no more.^^ There is no more any divine 
right of kings. The motto of the Prince of Wales 
■ — ^^^I serve'' — ^is the only motto fit to be engraved 
over any throne. 

After traveling through the country and being 
in touch with schools and colleges, as well as with 
the men of the street, after reading the modem 
literature in the magazines and weekly papers, 
one is impressed with the fact that there is a sort 



THE PASSION FOR SERVICE 125 

of materialistic epicureanism wMch is seeking to 
make its way in high places. There is a drying up 
of the great source of life, of the old sense of the 
outreach of humanity, of destiny outlasting the 
stars, and a high calUng that is not ended with 
dollars and position. As a recent writer in one 
of our leading magazines has said, ^^ Robbed of 
eternity, we mean to make time pay to the utmost. 
Hence this nervous, feverish activity. Our anx- 
iety is an unconfessed manifestation of our im- 
mense sense of loss. We have but a few minutes 
in which to rob the house of life, let us seize all 
the articles in sight. Death, the householder, is 
even now waiting to take us into custody.'^ As 
we look back at our old Puritan ancestors, we pity 
them for their narrow quarters, and all the hard- 
ships which they must have endured from lack of 
the conveniences which have become necessities 
to us. We live so much more comfortably and 
easily. In the dread winters which they passed, 
they must fell the trees and chop the wood and 
throw it into the great fireplace where most of 
the heat disappeared up the chimney. To light 
their homes, they had the tallow dips, which they 
prepared with much labor. Now if we want heat 
or light, we press a button. Conveniences of 
every kind await our nod. Handicapped as our 
fathers were, we often wonder was their life worth 
living. But as a matter of fact, they seem to have 
been rather happier than we are. The wilful 



126 HEEALDS OF A PASSION 

poverty of our spiritual lives must vastly impress 
us as we contrast that with the holy joy which is 
reflected in the story of their lives, which they 
have handed down to us. 

At a recent church convention, the question 
arose on what issue to put special emphasis. 
Some thought it should be on social regeneration, 
some that it should be on legal enactments to 
outlaw sin, and others that it should be the appli- 
cation of religion to business, but it was finally 
decided that the crying need of the hour was first 
to get some religion that could be applied, to have 
some ideals that were good enough to regenerate 
the world when they were applied. 

A recent article in one of our leading magazines 
makes bold to say that the destiny of man was 
once talked of as a spiritual mystery, connoting 
endless endeavor and opportunity. Terror and 
splendor attended the "Word. Now the highest 
dream of high destiny is a porcelain bathtub, or 
some safe shelter behind a wire screen where we 
shall be impervious to the attack of germs. We 
have need of a profounder faith, a more poignant 
fear than this age knows. 

One of our New York papers asked this ques- 
tion, ^^ What is the matter with our mode of lifeT^ 
and these were the answers given by the men 
whom the reporters stopped on Broadway: ^*We 
are drifting away from the faith of our fore- 
fathers. There are 65,000,000 heathen in Amer- 



THE PASSION FOR SERVIOE 127 

ica. That alone answers the question. ' ^ Another 
said, '^People are fighting for the material things 
of this world, instead of the spiritual. ^^ And the 
next man said, ^^We are drifting away; from the 
teachings of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. 
We need to be transformed instead of reformed. 
We are in the grip of a materialistic philosophy.'' 
I think we are all agreed that the need of the 
hour is the restatement of the great verities which 
always have been and always will be supreme in 
the lives of men. We want the same upholding 
strength which the patriarchs knew and by virtue 
of which they went out to a land which they knew 
not, because they heard the call of Grod. We never 
needed more than we need now the consolations 
which uplift the soul in the midst of catastrophe 
and loss. They tell us that our churches are 
empty, but our asylums and our morgues are full. 
There is nothing that will so steady men in the 
midst of strain and calamity to play the game, to 
fight the good fight to the end, as to realize the 
besetting and forefending God. If we have lost 
our faith, our hope in iromortality, how did we 
lose it? Must we not go back to the place where 
we had it last and see if we cannot find it? ^'If 
we have been robbed of incalculable hopes and 
aspirations, who robbed us? Do we not owe it 
to ourselves and to our children to bring the 
robbers to trial and to take from them that which 



128 HEEALDS OF A PASSION 

they have filched from us, making us and our 
children bankrupt indeed?'' 

One of our liberal papers some time ago had 
two editorials, the heading of which^seemed like 
an affront to our whole Christian life. The first 
question asked was, ' ' Can democracy tolerate the 
Church?" At first one was inclined to be indig- 
nant at the iconoclast who could even frame such 
a question, but it all resolves itself into a question 
of fact. If the church is the friend of the people, 
if the church is helpful in those things which are 
lovely and of good report, if the principles which 
it advocates make life safer, property more se- 
cure, and conserve the highest interest of society, 
there can be no question but that democracy must 
be the greatest ally which the church has, and 
the church the greatest organization to consum- 
mate a true democracy. The other question was, 
^'Can Christianity tolerate the church?'' The 
answer to that must lie in the question, ^'What 
is the church in its essential spirit and what is it 
seeking to become?" Christianity cannot tolerate 
the church unless the church is Christian, that is 
unless it has the principles of Christ in its life, 
unless it puts the first things first and enthrones 
spiritual values above all others and gives itself 
uncalculatingly and unstintingly to those things 
to which the Master gave Himself. It must cease 
to discriminate between the rich and the poor, or 
even between the ignorant and the learned, or 



THE PASSION FOR SERVICE 129 

between those socially at the top or socially at the 
bottom. Jesus was no respecter of persons. He 
has one gospel for the Pharisee and the Publican 
— one gospel for Dives and for Lazarus. 

Customs hoary with age have passed away be- 
cause they were useless, because they did not 
benefit mankind. Once slavery flourished in every 
land. That was service under compulsion. It was 
right dominated by might, and God said, ^'It must 
go." The same is true of organization and 
methods of business and everything else that does 
not serve humanity. Their doom is written in the 
nature of things. Customs which curse and not 
bless cannot long survive, for they bear their 
doom in their own deeds. 

We invite to our clubs and to our secret socie- 
ties men who occupy a similar social plane, or who 
are congenial, or men of common tastes. If we 
want to make a club of the church, we can do the 
same thing there, but such a church will go down 
to ruin. A church must serve all classes and con- 
ditions of men, and he who has caught the spirit 
of his Master will go with a bounding love and 
a heart on fire to give service to those who need it 
most. It needs to be everywhere proclaimed that 
while the first duty of a man is to get his own 
soul right with God, he cannot grow in grace or 
even preserve his own sense of acceptance with 
God unless he throws himself with absolute aban- 



130 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

don into the same work for which his Master lived 
and died. 

"God does with us as we with torches do 
Not light them for themselves; 
For if our virtues go not forth of us 
'Twere all the same as if we had them not." 

The church need have no fear of anarchy or so- 
cialism or sabotage or skepticism of any sort, if 
it will give itself to service. 

Bnt it is not enough, as we have said, to care 
for the lesser needs of our human life. ^* A man's 
life consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
which he possesses.'' We are to lead men to a 
larger life. Here is our greatest service. We 
must seek for better conditions for men, but we 
must realize that first and last and all the time 
our object is to make better men. 

I know scores of fathers and mothers who are 
in anguish not because their sons are not well 
paid, not because they do not live in good houses 
and under the best of sanitary conditions, but 
their hearts are breaking because their children 
are reaping the wages of unrighteousness, be- 
cause in the midst of all their plenty they have 
turned from God to serve the world, the flesh and 
the devil. No one can read the daily papers with- 
out staggering under the fact that men of social 
prominence and many of our leaders, both among 
workers and capitalists, are men of ungodly lives 
who use the advantages of better conditions of 



THE PASSION FOR SERVICE 131 

labor and better returns of capital to weigh their 
souls down to hell with the additional temptations 
which these successes have given them. 

The church is to be the regenerator of the world 
— to throw itself into the breach, and since it 
stands supremely for spiritual things, it is to put 
these things at the very front. How can a pastor 
sleep nights or enjoy the comforts of life until he 
is conscious that he is doing the utmost within his 
power to put life under the ribs of this death? 
How can any member of the church go to his place 
of worship, receive the holy sacrament, which 
marks afresh the sacrifice of his Lord and recalls 
his own holy promise to be true to Him, without 
realizing that by daylight and by dark he must 
sound forth the call of his Master by his lips and 
by his life? When the passion of such a service 
shall possess the heart of the church, the world 
will throw off its indifference and the church will 
come to its own by the preeminence of its life and 
the power of its sacrifice. 



Chapter XI 
HOW TO NOURISH THE SACEED FIRE 



CHAPTER XI 

HOW TO :eTOTJRISH THE SACKED FIRB 

^^ Follow me,'' said Jesus, ^^and I will make you 
fishers of men." A man cannot become such of 
his own self. He is not equal to a task so super- 
nal. As we have been saying all along, nothing 
but the touch of his Master's passion can create 
or conserve the soul's spiritual life. 

Boreham remarks on the transformation which 
took place in the life of Thomas Chalmers. He 
was the brilliant pastor of a little church in 
Kilmany, a marvelous preacher when he was only 
twenty-three. He was a good pastor and won 
their unstinted admiration and love. But they 
could not understand why when they came to the 
kirk on the Sabbath day he fulminated at that 
little company against the heinous mckedness of 
theft, of murder, and of adultery. After they had 
spent a hard week's work in field and stable, why 
should they be berated by their minister as if they 
had spent the week in open shame? ^^This," says 
Chalmers' biographer, ^* continued from 1803 to 
1811, but then something happened. Chalmers 
ceased to thunder against the grosser crimes and 
against the iniquities of Napoleon, but every day 

135 



136 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

he had something fresh to say about the love of 
God, about the cross of Christ, and about the way 
of salvation.'' ^^He would bend over the pulpit 
and press us to take the gift," says one of his 
hearers, ^^as if he had it that moment in his hand 
and would not be satisfied until every one of us 
had got possession of it. And then when the ser- 
mon was over and he rose to pronounce the bene- 
diction, he would break out afresh with some new 
entreaty, unwilling to let us go until he had made 
one more effort to persuade us to accept it. ' ' 

He says that in 1811 he was converted. When 
he was called away to a great city parish this was 
what he said to his humble parishioners, ^^For the 
first eight years of my twelve with you, I thun- 
dered away against crimes of every sort, but the 
interesting fact is that during the whole of that 
period I never once heard of any reformation 
being wrought among you. It was not until the 
free offer of forgiveness through the blood of 
Christ was urged upon you that I ever heard of 
those subordinate reformations which I made the 
ultimate object of my earlier ministry. You have 
taught me that to preach Jesus Christ is the only 
effective way of preaching morality, and the les- 
son which I have learned in your humble cot- 
tages, I shall carry into a wider field.'' 

Bunyan said the same thing long before the 
days of Chalmers. He says, ^ *I went for the space 
of two years crying out against men's sins and 



HOW TO NOURISH SACRED FHIE 137 

their fearful state because of them. After which, 
the Lord came in upon my own soul with peace 
and comfort through Christ. He gave me many 
sweet discoveries of blessed grace through Him. 
Wherefore now I altered in my preaching and did 
much labor to hold forth Christ in all His offices, 
relations and benefits unto the world. After this 
God led me into something of the mystery of the 
union with Christ. Wherefore that I discovered 
and showed it to them also." Ah, if we could 
only measure to the heights of that personal ex- 
perience of which it is written ^^What we have 
seen and felt with confidence we tell." 

Theories may be cold, but reality is full of pas- 
sion. When one has an experience of his own, 
then he hastens to bring others into the same 
blessed knowledge, and when once others are 
brought in his own confidence is thereby multi- 
plied. What a miracle of grace to be able to win 
a soul to God and what infinite comfort to the 
soul who wins another! Nothing can take the 
place of it. Mr. Valiant-f or-Truth cries out, when 
the summons to go hence seized him, ^^My sword I 
give to him who shall succeed me in my pilgrim- 
age; my courage and skill to him who can get 
them ; my marks and scars I carry with me to be 
my witness that I have fought His battles who 
will now be my rewarder." When a man has 
victories hung up in the high halls of memory, 
how his faith increases! He won them himself 



138 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

at the point of a Damascus blade, which is the 
word of God, and he is fain to say with David, 
^ ' There is none like it ; give it to me. ' ' 

It is a sad thing in the life of the individual 
when the child spirit dies ; when he ceases to won- 
der and adore. How supremely true it is in the 
life of him who proclaims the message that he 
will lose its power when the wonder and marvel 
of it fades out of his soul! A man need have no 
troubles over the miracles of the first century, 
when he sees them reproduced in his own life at 
the touch of the pierced Hand. If one can feel the 
compelling glow of those adoring words, 

^When I survey the wondrous cross 
On which the Prince of glory died 
My richest gain I count but loss 
And pour contempt on all my pride.'' 

he will be able to say 

^^ Jesus, I love thee, thou art to me 
Dearer than ever mortal can be.'' 

As well think of restraining the ardor of the 
Bridegroom as to lay restraining hands upon his 
devotion. His love is as fire shut up in his bones. 
That will transform the pulpit and kindle a blaze 
which will draw men from every walk in life to see 
it bum. 

We must make more personal the message 
which we bring to men. Dr. Jefferson will not be 
accused of failing to emphasize the social note or 
of being unduly moved by his emotions, but in his 



HOW TO NOURISH SACEED FIRE 139 

Yale Lectures, he says, ^^Many a man is preaching 
to a dwindling congregation because his sermons 
have lost the personal note. He chills by his 
vague generalities, or enrages by his wholesale 
denunciation. This is not the age in which the 
preacher can afford to lose the personal touch. 
Many forces conspire to blur the edges of indi- 
viduality and melt men into a common mass.'^ 
Even organized philanthropy has a tendency to 
lose the individual. It is the lack of this personal 
touch which is multiplying our problems and deep- 
ening the blackness of human tragedy. Thou- 
sands of men and women all over the world have 
lost their grip upon the high things of life because 
no one but God feels for them. There is no one on 
earth who cares for their souls. Men are lost to 
the church as soon as they are submerged in the 
crowd. Dr. Jefferson adds, ^^In fact, the preacher 
is in danger of losing himself." 

It is a matter of history that on one occasion 
when Julia Ward Howe invited Charles Sumner 
to meet a distinguished guest at her house, he 
replied, '^I do not know that I wish to meet your 
friend. I have outlived my interest in individ- 
uals.'' Recording in her diary that night the 
Senator's surly remark, Mrs. Howe wrote after 
it, ' ' God Almighty, by latest accounts, had not got 
so far as this." 

The great secret of power is the personal touch. 
God Himself put on a soul and a body when He 



140 HERALDS OF A PASSION 

came to us. They were arms of flesh and blood, 
like ours, which stretched wide upon the cross, 
and which when taken down and folded over the 
lifeless bosom invisibly folded a saved world in 
their embrace. 

What a beautiful testimonial that was to the 
matchless personality of Henry Drummond, that 
when an artisan was dying, his wife knocked at 
Drummond 's door and said, ^^My husband is 
deeing^, sir. He^s no' able to speak to you, and 
he's no' able to hear you, and I dinna ken as he 
can see you ; but I would like him to hae a breath 
o' you aboot him afore he dees." No books can 
ever nourish a believing heart as will the goodness 
and patience and truth which is reflected in in- 
dividual lives. 

Here then is the conclusion of the whole matter. 
Jesus said, *^I am come that ye might have life 
and that ye might have it more abundantly." By 
vital contact with Him who is the way, the truth, 
and the life, we must keep our souls alive. The 
inner light must not fail; our passion for the souls 
of men must never cease. But if, alas, our passion 
for the souls of men has in any sense failed, we 
must get it back. We must have our trysting 
place with God and meeting Him there, He who 
heareth in secret will reward us openly, and we 
shall have power with men. However great our 
natural abilities, they are only the channels 
through which the tides of holy passion and power 



HOW TO NOURISH SACRED FIRE 141 

must run. Let us not mistake the channel for the 
power, and let us be careful that no act of ours 
shall sever our connection with the source of 
power. The secret of the Lord is with those who 
fear Him. In fellowship with Him we shall catch 
His love — a love which stopped not at the cross. 
We cannot do better than to utter the prayer of 
the old hymn which for generations has aroused 
the church to a waiting pentecost. 

"Oh, that it now from heaven might fall, 
And all our sins consume, 
Come, Holy Ghost, for thee I call, 
Spirit of burning come. 

"Refining fire, go through my heart, 
Illuminate my soul. 
Scatter thy life through every part, 
And sanctify the whole." 

The Master's call is upon us. It is hot with 
haste. Rise up ; let us go ! 



THE END 



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